Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke has announced that the Government plan to tackle questionable medical evidence and make it ''quicker, cheaper and easier for valid injury claims to be dealt with through the small claims court''. Proposals, to be outlined in a consultation document this summer, will include consulting on the feasibility of introducing independent medical panels. The independent medical experts, who would have no direct links to either claimants or defendants, would replace the current assessment of whiplash injuries by either GPs or doctors employed by medical reporting organisations.
Doctors can currently receive a fee of up to £195 to process these claims and some have a regular client base of solicitors.
But Karl Tonks, president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (Apil), said: ''Whiplash injuries are real, they can be long term, and must not be trivialised...before it announces a raft of propositions which risk barring genuinely injured people from bringing legitimate claims, the Government must have a wider debate about the real issues, and it must also hold the insurance industry to account...I'm really concerned that in all the latest populist rhetoric about whiplash claims, everyone is being tarred with the same brush.'' He also warned that, in a bid by insurers to save costs, there was a ''growing trend of insurers offering cash to claimants even before a report has been received from a doctor''.
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