Nasty smell about it
The consultation on proposals to remove public funding from clinical negligence cases and make winning Claimants use part of the damages to pay costs is shown to be (as campaigners have always known) to be skewed to the interests of hte insurance lobby.
Civil servants told insurers they were “pushing at an open door” over legal aid changes that would benefit the insurance industry by hundreds of millions of pounds, documents reveal. The papers, obtained under freedom of information laws, record discussions between insurers, the NHS and government officials working under Jonathan Djanogly, the justice minister. They show that Djanogly, who faces conflict of interest allegations over his holdings in the insurance industry, met leading insurers on 19 January. In an extraordinary move he asked the firms how best to draft rebuttals to criticisms of government proposals that might arise from its consultation on legal aid reforms, effectively offering them a second chance to shape policy.
Jo is a Partner specialising in catastrophic personal injury and clinical negligence claims.
