With fears growing over the country’s developing ‘compensation culture’, the Justice Secretary has announced that cuts are to be made to the fees charged for medical reports in cases involving whiplash injuries.  The new regulations will be launched in October, meaning that medical professionals can charge a maximum of £180 for initial whiplash reports. This compares to the current prices of around £700 being charged – enforcing a cut to around one quarter of the current rates.

With approximately 500,000 whiplash claims being made every year in the UK, insurers have calculated that the claims add an extra £90 a year to the average motor insurance policy. The Government said that the new regulations come as further changes to “tackle the compensation culture”, following the reforms to the new laws surrounding “no win no fee” deals.

Changes include:

• ·      “Referral fees” between lawyers, insurers and claims firms for profitable claims to be banned
• ·      Lawyers are no longer allowed to double their fees following a win
• ·      Law firms banned from offering incentives to potential clients
• ·      Courts allowed to reject any case in which dishonesty is recognised
• ·      Ban on experts that produce medical reports to offer treatment to injured claimant
• ·      Ban on insurers settling whiplash claims without medical report confirming injury

With many other changes due to take place, Mr Grayling said: "We are determined to have an improved, robust system for medical evidence - so genuine claims can still be settled but fraud is driven out of the market."

If you have suffered a whiplash injury, and are looking to claim compensation, please contact us.