In his highly flawed and ideologically unsound report on UK’s health and safety laws and the compensation culture published in 2010, “Common Sense, Common Safety” Lord Young of Graffham admitted, possibly against his better judgement, that the growing compensation culture in our society was more down to perception than reality although he referred to a “growing but significant number” of claims being raised.
One year later, following on from that report, the coalition Government ordered another review of health and safety legislation, this time carried out by Professor Ragnar Lofstetd and, once again he was asked to investigate the supposed rush to the courts to claim compensation for injury.
His conclusion was similar to Lord Young, he said the “compensation culture‟ (or the perception of it) in the UK has been the subject of several reviews over the last few years, but no evidence has been presented for its existence”.
So, after two reports commissioned by themselves it would have been hoped that the Government would accept they were wrong, that the growing compensation culture was a myth.
Sadly no, even after the unconstitutional amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill excluding civil liability from health and safety compensation cases, Chris Grayling then UK Justice Secretary announced that this would not be the end of the Government’s fight to tackle the growing compensation culture, clearly, he had not read the reports from Lord Young or Professor Lofstedt or was (more likely) was choosing to ignore them.
At the same time his former department, the DWP, claimed that the compensation culture, which several studies including two commissioned by their Government could not find any evidence of, was stifling economic innovation and growth!!
The Compensation Myth: Seven myths about the “compensation culture” was published by the TUC and the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers to dispel the myths peddled by the Coalition Government of the time and their right-wing media outlet supporters.
In this joint report they dismantle the myths one by one, namely;
- Compensation claims are spiralling out of control: compensation claims are not growing significantly as claimed by Lord Young, they halved in the 10 years, from 183342 in 2002/3 to 91115 in 2012/13
- Workers are too ready to claim compensation: really? in 2013 out of 610000 workers injured, or made ill, by work only 90000 (15%) received compensation
- Compensation payments are too high: compensation payments are based on loss, the majority are for under £5000 although, again based on loss a very small number will provide significant sums of compensation for claimants suffering more severe injuries.
- Compensation is paid for any old accident: by removing civil liability from health and safety personal injury cases whereby claimants had only to prove health and safety laws had been breached to be compensated, replacing this with a requirement to prove negligence will result in many more people not being compensated for harm done to them as the burden of proof is greater, claims will be costlier, and the risk will be greater.
- It is unfair that insurance companies should have to pay out for diseases such as asbestos-related diseases where they could not have known the risks: Insurance companies make profits writing business based on risk, they accept premiums for insurance having considered the risk the business creates, so when a worker is injured, develops an industrial disease or other work-related illness then the insurer should accept liability. Risk is mainly foreseeable but, as in the case of asbestos, can be ignored by those creating the risk and by their insurers over a protracted period until the harm caused reaches epidemic proportions and ultimately vast numbers of legitimate compensation claims.
- Many cases would not go ahead if unions did not encourage members to claim: unions get blamed for a lot, but this is a belter. The priority for trade unions is to provide safer and healthier workplaces for their members, a benefit enjoyed by non-members alike. When things go wrong, as they occasionally do, unions will advise on and support members claims for compensation for losses incurred and they should not apologise for that. It should not be forgotten that trade unions will pressure employers to learn from workplace injuries and the financial loss incurred by paying compensation quite often focuses the mind on health and safety improvement and prevention.
- Lawyers often drag these cases on unnecessarily to keep their costs up: Again, there is very little evidence to support this being anything other than a myth, to “drag” a case out without good reason would leave the legal representatives open to complaints to professional bodies. In Scotland a new all Scotland Personal Injury Court was set up to deal with most of work related personal injury claims, those with a value between £1000 and £100000 and the rules and procedures prevent such occurrences.
Scotland’s largest teaching union, the Educational Insitute of Scotland (EIS) with over 60,000 members published details of compensation awards secured for their members on the 30th December. A total of £469,758 was secured for 20 members during 2017. The highest award of £220, 000 was secured for a member who suffered serious injuries in a fall while £1,925 was won for a member suffering knee injury in another fall. £76,877 was awarded in respect of claims for injuries resulting from violence either by pupils or parents.
Twenty awards from a union with 60,000 members does not indicate any evidence of trade union involvement in generating claims that have no substance or little prospect of success, it does highlight the important role the EIS has played in securing rightful and deserved compensation for their members financial losses and personal suffering, a role that trade unions will continue to do as well as using workplace incidents resulting in injury such as those in the EIS report to create safer and healthier working environments for members.
Instead of perpetuating the myth that is compensation culture the UK Government, the insurance industry and employers should work with trade unions to prevent compensatable injuries, illness and disease happening in the first place.
Surely a better use for money than defending indefensible cases and cultivating spurious nonsense about the compensation culture that never was.
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