NLJ this week: Changes to the personal injury discount rate in Scotland & Northern Ireland

Writing in this week’s NLJ, two lawyers and a former government actuary explain their concerns.

The Forum of Complex Injury Solicitors (FOCIS) and the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers seek ‘the unparticularised sources the government actuary relied upon’ and ‘query the basis on which she was able to reasonably make this determination for the long-term’.

Julian Chamberlayne, FOCIS chair and partner at Stewarts, Professor Victoria Wass, emerita professor of labour economics, Cardiff Business School, and Chris Daykin, an independent consultant and actuary (government actuary 1989–2007), set out the issues.

Chamberlayne, Wass and Daykin write: ‘If, as the authors contend, she has materially underestimated the long-term earnings inflation differential, that will likely result in many of the most seriously injured claimants running out of funds to meet their high-level care needs in their later years.’