Critics of the Government’s plan to cut Legal Aid for victims of medical negligence have long argued that it will not even achieve its objective of saving money, quite apart from the gross unfairness to injured people who will be denied access to justice. This was not simply the vested interests of claimant lawyers speaking. As previously reported on this blog, even the NHS Litigation Authority concluded that Legal Aid was by far the fairest and most economical way to fund medical negligence claims, and Lord Justice Jackson, the Law Lord charged with driving down the cost of civil litigation, has made it abundantly clear that medical negligence should remain in scope for Legal Aid.
The Ministry of Justice plans came under fire again yesterday with the publication by the Law Society of independent research by Kings College which concluded that far from saving the government money (£10.5m on the Government’s figures) the proposed cuts to medical negligence legal aid will actually result in a net loss of around £18m. The research points out that many claimants who would previously have been granted legal aid would have to purchase expensive insurance, an expense which would have to be borne largely by an already cash-strapped NHS.
The Government’s Bill is due to be debated in the House of Lords today and seems likely to get a very hostile reception.
Action Against Medical Accidents (AvMA), the charity which works closely with victims of medical accidents and specialist clinical negligence lawyers such as Mayo Wynne Baxter, has campaigned vigorously to get the Government to drop its proposal to withdraw Legal Aid from clinical negligence cases. The charity took its challenge to the Court where judicial review proceedings are ongoing. AvMA’s Chief Executive, Peter Walsh, commented:
“Cutting Legal Aid for clinical negligence is just bonkers whichever way you look at it. Either the Government is being deeply cynical and people injured by clinical negligence simply won’t be able to access justice, or the taxpayer and the NHS will be hit hard at a time it can least afford it. As the report states, ‘there is certainly no economic justification for these changes’.”
By Robert Bell
