PI Brief Update

Twenty Five Years Plus - Deborah Evans, APIL Chief Executive

08/01/15. After 25 years of turning up to almost every fight, if not all, on behalf of injured people, it would now be inconceivable for APIL not to be involved when the personal injury landscape is facing change.

As the association moves into its 26th year, it is battling ahead with the latest onslaughts on its near 4,000 practitioner members and, ultimately, the injured people they represent.

Not for the first time, the Government’s attention is on whiplash claims and it is planning, yet again, to increase the small claims court limit to £5,000. Even more sinister, is the proposal to remove general damages for some whiplash claims altogether. Our president, Jonathan Wheeler, described this move as a show of ‘callous indifference’ to victims of negligence.

APIL is of course here for the debate and has been sharpening its tools once more, and striving to influence the decision-makers ahead of the consultation.

And while the Government bids to protect the insurance industry’s purse, it is also looking out for its own with its plans for fixing costs for medical negligence claims against the health service. While the details remain to be seen as we wait for the consultation, a fixed costs regime for medical claims will pose a potential access to justice problem for some cases where the work involved is more costly than the resulting damages. In a quick poll of APIL members, 39 per cent said there could be a place for a fast track system for certain cases. The other 61 per cent reserved their judgement, no doubt conscious that the devil will be in the detail. The consultation is delayed and we hope the Department of Health is using the extra time to give its plans some serious thought. In the meantime, we are devising sensible options for workable schemes that would deliver benefit for the injured person through improved speed of resolution and earlier admissions of liability.

Meanwhile, north of the border, APIL’s Scottish members are coming to terms with changes to their court system, the new sheriff court jurisdiction limit and the specialist court for PI cases. We are also expecting the Expenses and Funding Bill, which is the more acceptable version of Lord Justice Jackson’s work on litigation funding in England and Wales.

In Northern Ireland, the scrapping of legal aid is on the agenda and a consultation closing in February examines the potential introduction of CFAs - the post-Jackson version. County courts are also facing closure.

While APIL of course ensures its seat at the table when change is forced upon its members and their clients, the association has its own agenda for change which it continues to push. Most notably, we support Andy McDonald MP’s Negligence and Damages Bill. Currently the level of statutory bereavement damages is £12,980 in England Wales, meaning it is cheaper to kill people than it is to maim them. APIL looks to Scotland for the answer, where each case is assessed on an individual basis. Also, the law on psychiatric harm suffered by secondary victims is far too restrictive, and out of date. These issues are addressed in Mr McDonald’s Bill. APIL has campaigned on these issues for many years, and will continue to do so until much-needed change happens.

APIL will also campaign for compulsory public liability insurance for businesses. Some people who are injured wrongly by others cannot receive the compensation they really need, and to which they are entitled, because the guilty parties have no insurance. We have heard some terrible cases in which injured people have had no-one to pursue for redress.

And APIL’s current president is seeking to develop new ways of protecting vulnerable witnesses, such as those who have suffered abuse, when they seek redress through the courts.

Life after 25 is already shaping up to be very busy indeed.

Looking ahead to APIL’s future, it will continue to provide injured people with a strong voice. As APIL’s president Jonathan Wheeler said recently in the association’s in-house journal: “We are all facing change, and we are so much stronger together in the face of it”.

Deborah Evans
Chief Executive of APIL

Image ©iStockphoto.com/PeskyMonkey