NHS payouts for medical blunders have reached £1.2billion over the past two years, new figures revealed today.
Almost half of the legal settlements were for mistakes on overstretched maternity units.
The revelation of the damages bill, which includes cases where patients have died through negligence and where children have been left severely disabled with brain damage, comes after a Standard investigation revealed legal action for obstetrics failings has soared by a quarter in just one year.
In the last financial year, NHS trusts across the country paid £650million in compensation. The year before, the bill came to £564million.
In London, the damages for clinical negligence came to £126million, a third higher than last year's costs.
The figures released by the NHS Litigation Authority also show legal payouts by hospital trusts in the capital soared by 40 per cent in one year to £118million.
Barking, Havering & Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, which is being investigated by NHS watchdog the Care Quality Commission after fears over patient safety, paid out £11million, the highest among trusts in London.
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs five major London hospitals including St Mary's in Paddington, paid £10.7million.
Geoff Martin, chairman of campaign group Health Emergency, said that as the Government's reforms are pushed through litigation costs will "continue to spiral".
"These figures are reflective of problems the service has suffered due to a series of cutbacks and under the reforms things are likely to get a lot worse," he said.
"We are already desperately short of staff and will continue to be under the plans. Staff shortages then leads to mistakes being made. It's a vicious circle. Every pound we lose in litigation is a pound that could have been spent on providing better health care."
A senior source at NHS London said: "There are a number of reasons why claims may have risen. Some payments are historical and relate to cases a few years old; also payments today are often much larger than in the past due to the rising costs of treatment."
A spokeswoman from Barking, Havering and Redbridge said: "The trust is one of the largest and busiest in the NHS. This, coupled with having one of the largest maternity units in England, can lead to high-cost settlements."
A spokeswoman at Imperial said it "deals with complex cases referred from other trusts in the country such as maternity and vascular surgery, as well as major trauma, and many of these are high risk patients undergoing high risk procedures".
Case Study: Midwife's error made Theo a quadriplegic
Theo Kramer is almost completely paralysed, cannot speak and has up to 40 seizures a day after he was starved of oxygen while his mother was in labour.
The nine-year-old, who needs round-the-clock care, this year won a lump sum of £2.75 million from Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust and will receive £235,000 every year until he is 19, and £275,000 every year after that.
Theo was delivered unconscious after a student midwife at the Edgware Birth Centre, in Burnt Oak, failed to monitor his heart rate properly before he was born in April 2002. He spent the next three weeks in intensive care.
His parents, Earnie and Janet from Welwyn Garden City, were later told he had cerebral palsy and quadriplegia. He also suffers from drug-resistant epilepsy.
Highest payouts
Barking, Havering & Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust £11 million
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust £10.7 million
Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust £8 million
Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust £7 million
Lewisham Hospital NHS Trust £6.9 million
source: thisislindon.co.uk
Birth Injury Claims
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