’The outcome of this review has made an unjust situation even worse,’ says president
Experts have slammed changes to the whiplash tariff made by lord chancellor and justice secretary Shabana Mahmood.
The Civil Liability Act allows the lord chancellor to set a tariff of damages for whiplash injuries of up to two years in duration and to make regulations to do so.
It also requires the lord chancellor to review regulations within three years of implementation.
Mahmood said she had decided to maintain the existing split structure of the tariff and to provide additional guidance on defining minor psychological injury.
She will also uprate the tariff by around 15% to account for inflation to May 2024 and for forecasted inflation to May 2027.
Response
Responding to the review, The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (Apil) president Kim Harrison said that ”injured people will receive less compensation in real terms than they did in 2021, when the tariff was introduced”.
Read: Data does not support OIC mixed injury ‘epidemic’ claim – Acso
Read: Changes to personal injury system causing legal access problems – Tomlinson
Explore more motor-related content here or discover other news stories here
“A 15% increase is not enough,” she added.
“If the lord chancellor were simply to increase the actual tariff, as introduced, in line with inflation using the consumer price index, rather than making convoluted predictions about future inflation, the increase to damages in the tariff would be 22%.
“Increases in inflation have been eroding injured people’s damages since the tariff was introduced, a tariff which was set at an insulting, arbitrary level to begin with. The outcome of this review has made an unjust situation even worse.”
Meanwhile, Matthew Maxwell Scott, executive director at the Association of Consumer Support Organisations (Acso), said it was not clear when the uprated tariff would come into effect.
He added: “While it’s welcome that the lord chancellor has finally published the uprated tariff, we still don’t know when this will come into effect, given there is still an eight-week consultation with the lady chief justice to come and then a parliamentary process to get through.
”As things stand, the tariff has been eroded considerably by inflation, as the lord chancellor acknowledges, but we still run the risk of the tariff not being revised until around four years after its original implementation.
”That seems grossly unfair on injured people who have already had to face significant erosion of their rights.”
No comments yet