The Motor Insurers Bureau (MIB) has been forced to remove a key provision in the Untraced Drivers Agreement 2017, following a campaign led by a solicitor and motor insurance law specialist. The revision was announced within a day of the agreement coming into effect on 1 March 2017.
The MIB published the replacement scheme on 2 March. It substitutes the earlier scheme dated 10 January 2017 with retrospective effect. Clause 10 of the earlier version prohibited victims from using a solicitor to help them fill out or submit the claim form or to take any active role at the crucial initial stages of the claim on penalty of the entire claim being rejected outright. Solicitor and campaigner, Nicholas Bevan, complained that this was unlawful and with the backing of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers the MIB has now omitted the offending provision but added a requirement that only the claimant can sign the form.
Bevan welcomed the MIB’s action in removing the prohibition on solicitors. However, he warned that "the new agreement is highly unsatisfactory because it fails to provide an equivalent standard of compensatory guarantee required under European law.
"The new agreement still contains a number of unlawful provisions such as the three-year deferral of interest accruing and the lack of any suitable requirement for independent legal representation of minors and mentally handicapped victims. These are likely to be challenged in the future. They've hit reverse but gone into a wheel-spin.” Read more: http://bit.ly/2mAy7lL
