Your say: An unedifying campaign by insurers

In his View from the Top article it seems he cannot see the reality on the ground. Anyone with a genuine claim for whiplash should be compensated according to the merits of their own case.

Whiplash injuries can vary in severity, and research shows that around a third of victims can go on to develop a chronic condition. To cap damages for whiplash may deny a genuine claimant the proper compensation to which they are entitled.

Before calling for the government, courts and medical profession to "restore sanity" in assessing claims for whiplash, McMillan should instead look closer to home.

The growing practice of insurers making pre-medical offers, which our members often see in the lower value road traffic accident claims process, strips the system of one of the important checks and balances that helps weed out dishonest and unmeritorious claims.

Claimants are also unlikely to receive the correct amount of compensation when the case is concluded on the basis of a pre-medical offer.

The suggestion that genuinely injured people should be under a legal obligation to contact defendant insurers, so they can deal with the claim directly, would increase the risk of unscrupulous insurers trying to under-settle genuine cases.

Insurers know that injured people lack the legal and medical knowledge to determine whether an offer is suitable.

It would be completely inappropriate for the law to be changed in a way that would allow an unprincipled insurer to exploit this blatant conflict of interest.

Similarly, another of McMillan's suggestions - to increase the small claims limit - would undoubtedly damage an injured person's access to justice.

In the small claims court, the claimant, who is almost always an uninformed, one-time user of the system, is pitted against the ‘Goliath' insurance company, which knows exactly how to exploit this situation to win the case. The injured individual is completely out-gunned.

McMillan claims that a reduction in costs would lead to a fall in premiums. But, more than two years ago, costs were slashed when the streamlined process for lower value RTA claims was introduced. Were motor premiums ever reduced accordingly? Of course not.

And, although McMillan says the focus in a whiplash claim should be on rehabilitation, this does not mean that injured people should have to relinquish their entitlement to proper compensation.

The purpose of insurance is to provide redress for injured people who have to call on the system when things go wrong.

The insurance industry's relentless and unedifying campaign to avoid paying compensation is, in effect, a constant threat to pull the rug from under injured people's feet.

Karl Tonks
President, Association of Personal Injury Lawyers