The UK Government is set to introduce fixed recoverable costs for clinical negligence claims up to £25,000.
The bill hopes to reduce pressure on the NHS and ultimately, the taxpayer, as the cost of clinical negligence claims has risen substantially in recent years. In 2006/7, the cost was £582 million. In 2020/21, the cost had risen to £2.2 billion.
What impact will this have on Solicitors?
According to the Law Gazette, “Ministers have said they do not want to change the compensation that a successful claimant can receive, just the costs they can recover from defendants.”
Health minister Maria Caulfield suggests this proposal could save the NHS £454m over the next 10 years.
However, the bid comes with the suggestion of capping expert fees at £1,200 and solicitors may miss out or have to settle for low amounts on some complex low-value cases. The Law Society argue that this could prevent high-quality evidence from being collected. Similarly, they claim that a better solution would be to apply fixed recoverable costs only to simple claims so as not to restrict a solicitor’s ability to work on low-value cases to the best of their ability.
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