Lawyers outraged as ABI given go-ahead to fund PI gateway

The government has accepted an offer in principle from the insurance industry to fund the initial build for a new personal injury portal.

According to the Association for Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL), ”A decision was taken at ministerial level to allow the Association of British Insurers (ABI) to fund a new IT gateway to allow litigants-in-person, access to the system.”

This has since been confirmed by the ABI.

A spokesperson for the ABI said: “We confirm that the government has accepted an offer in principle from the insurance industry to fund the initial build for the new portal, which will be managed via the Motor Insurance Bureau (MIB).”

But this decision has sparked outrage among lawyers.

Access to Justice’s Andrew Twambley says it is ”totally outrageous”.

He said: “The whole idea behind the so-called reforms is to prevent/discourage claims, in order to save the insurers money so that they can pay dividends. Following the financial crash, investment returns have been poor so this was reflected in dividends. In order to boost insurer profits, they had to think of alternative ways to make money. Preventing motor claims goes some distance in achieving this aim.

“If the ABI has been put in charge of funding and possibly contributing to administering the portal, this will mean, to some extent, the ABI engineers justice, which goes against all legal development since William the Conqueror. They are hardly impartial when their main aim is to prevent claims. When I go away for the weekend I ask my elderly neighbour to look after my hens… I don’t go asking the fox that lives at the bottom of the field.

”One must question what the government have promised the ABI in return for taking this ’burden’ off government hands.”

Personal Injury lawyers had already seen a drop in profits in the wake of the reforms.