1. Entering the phrase ‘compensation culture’ into a UK-only Google search (on 1 December 2004, confined to reports in the preceding 12 months) generated some 25,500 web pages, whilst a search of the LexisNexis database of UK national newspapers produced 503 reports.

2. See ‘Curb claims culture, says Byers’Guardian, 10 March 2004.

3. See ‘Victim Nation’The Spectator, 21 August 2004. ‘Too many rights’ seems to be the central thesis. As well as criticising workplace health and safety rules and equality legislation, the Human Rights Act 1998 is caricatured as the ‘worst emanation… of the compensation culture’. In fact, the Act appears to have had most effect in the area of judicial review: see Public Law Project The Impact ofthe Human Rights Act on Judicial Review (2003). Elsewhere, its impact has been described as ‘in danger of stalling’: see Audit Commission Human Rights. Improving Public Service Delivery (2003).

4. The Promotion of Volunteering Bill (Bill 18 of 2003–04) was ‘talked out’ on third reading: see 423 HC Official Report (6th series) col 1720, 16 July 2004.

5. See Tomlinson v Congleton Borough Council [2004] UKHL 15 at [81], [2004] I AC 46, per Lord Hobhouse.

6. See Office of Fair Trading (OFT) An analysis of current problems in the UK liability insurance market (June 2003) para 10.4.

7. Ronald Walker QC archly offers the following definition: ‘an ethos the tenets of which are that all misfortunes, short of an act of God, are probably someone else's fault, and that the suffering should be relieved, or at any rate marked, by the receipt of a sum of money’: see ‘Compensation Culture: myth or reality?’The Times, 7 October 2003. The Institute of Actuaries, Report of a Working Party The Cost of Compensation Culture (December 2002) para 2.1, adopts a seemingly more serious, if inelegant, definition: ‘the desire of individuals to sue somebody having suffered as the result of something, which could have been avoided if the sued body had done their job properly.’ This appears to equate the ‘problem’ to all actions for ‘negligence’ (used in a non-technical sense), except those brought by corporate litigants or other organisations.

8. See Department of Trade and Industry Company Law. Director and Auditor Liability, Consultative Document (2003). The government's response rejected the call for a statutory cap on the liability of either directors or auditors. Legislating for a ‘proportionate liability’ regime to protect against ‘catastrophic’ audit risks as an alternative to capping, though initially ruled out by the consultation document on the basis that such a move would need to be part of a broader reform of the general law of negligence, has now been left open. Interested parties have been invited to consider whether a practical scheme of limiting liability on a proportionate basis by contract can be devised. See 424 HC Official Report (6th series) cols 107–109,7 September 2004.

9. Across a ten-year period the number of applications tripled to over 130,000 in 200001. The enactment of significant new statutory rights and changes in the economy appear to be the principal explanations, rather than any increase in the litigious propensity of workers: see Department of Trade and Industry Explaining the Growth in the Number of Applications to Industrial Tribunals 1972–1997 (2001). Notwithstanding, a number of substantive and procedural changes intended to stem the growth in applications and to save costs have been introduced. However, after two years of decline, the latest Employment Tribunal Service Annual Report (2003-04), shows a rise in applications to 115,042, seemingly for much the same reasons.

10. See Legal Services Commission Annual Report 2003/04 (HC Paper 870) Table 3c. See too Legal Services Commission A New Focus for Civil Lagal Aid: Encouraging Early Resolution; Discouraging Unnecessary Litigation (July 2004), the self-explanatory title of which reflects the approach of the Better Regulation Task Force: see below n 13.

11. See above n 7. The report candidly admits that its costings ‘are by no means precise and in places rely on some heroic assumptions’ (para 4.1). Nevertheless, the £10 bn figure is frequently repeated without qualification in the media and elsewhere. Cf F Furedi Courting Mistrust (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1999) estimating the cost of a ‘growing US-style compensation culture’ to be £1.8 bn in the public sector and £1.26 bn a year in the private sector - roughly one-third of the Actuaries’ figure.

12. The report has been heavily criticised by claimant lawyers for, amongst other things, inflating the total cost of compensation by including criminal injuries payments and the very substantial sums paid to farmers as a result of outbreaks of foot and mouth disease and BSE in the 1990s. See, eg, D Marshall ‘Compensation Culture’ [2003] JPI Law 79.

13. See Better Regulation Task Force Better Routes to Redress (May 2004) p 15.

14. See Tackling the “Compensation Culture”. Government Response to the Better Regulation Task Force Report: ‘Better Routes to Redress’ (November 2004). An interdepartmental ‘Ministerial Steering Group’ is responsible for considering what regulatory changes are desirable.

15. Above n 13, p 11

16. According to the Task Force, above n 13, p 11, ‘Quoting statistics will not win the argument whilst the papers run “compensation culture” stories’. By definition, claims reported in the media are unlikely to be representative; exceptionally they are simply fabricated. None the less, they may be highly influential in shaping public debate. For an account of the selective and sensationalised nature of much media reporting in the US concerning America's ‘litigation crisis’, the role of the media and other elite groups in constructing a populist moral panic, and its implications for the direction of tort law legislative reform, see W Haltom and M McCann Distorting the Law. Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crisis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

17. Above n 13, p 11 and Foreword entitled ‘Compensation Culture: Exploding the Urban Myth’.

18. By means of a leading question, a survey for insurers Nonvich Union elicited the response that ‘96% of people in Britain believe we are more likely to seek damages today than a decade ago’: see ‘The truth behind the claim game’Observer, 23 May 2004. The Actuaries’ report, above n 7, also claims that public attitudes have changed for the worse, though since those surveyed were ‘actuaries and their friends’ the sample is hardly representative. A Local Government Association press release, 5 February 2004, reporting that ‘68% of councils have experienced an increase in the number of tenuous claims’ appears to be based only on the ‘impressions’ of local government respondents. Insurance consultants AON say that 62% of employer respondents had seen an ‘increase in the cost of claims’, though the magnitude of the increase, its causes, types of claim, and the timescale, are all unspecified. See Blame, Claim and Gain: The Compensation and Blame Culture, Myth or Reality? (July 2004).

19. Defensive medicine is a phenomenon whose existence is widely asserted. However, there seems to be little reliable evidence documenting its precise nature, extent or effects. As to the UK, see M Ennis and C Vincent ‘The Effects of Medical Accidents and Litigation on Doctors and Patients’ (1994) 16 Law and Policy 97 at 99–106. For the position in North America, see D Dewees et al Exploring the Domain of Accident Law. Taking the Facts Seriously (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) pp 104–112.

20. See Ofsted Outdoor education. Aspects of good practice (HMI 2151,2004); and House of Commons, Education and Skills Committee, Education Outside the Classroom Second Report (HC Paper 120, February 2005), describing teachers’ fears of being sued (or prosecuted) following an accident as ‘entirely out of proportion to the real risks’. Cf ‘Compensation Culture Harms British Way of Life, says Judge’Independent, 21 June 2004, where Lord Phillips MR expresses concern that fear of litigation is threatening the pursuit of risky sporting and leisure activities.

21. See LawZone Newswire, no 225, 26 August 2003.

22. See above n 13, p 7. This focus reflects the class-based nature of much of the debate, as the Task Force explicitly recognised. Thus, the Actuaries’ report defines the ‘compensation culture’ so as to exclude corporate litigants entirely: see above n 7. By way of contrast, one commentator mischievously cites as examples of ‘scandalous compensation claims’ the actions brought by Lloyd's names ‘suing because they had not realised that underwriting insurance was not simply a licence to print money’: see R Levy ‘Just who's playing the claim and blame game’The Times, 1 June 2004.

23. Currently, there are two significant categories for which legal aid funding exceptionally continues to be available, namely, clinical negligence claims above £5,000, and public interest group litigation actions (some of which are personal injury actions against the NHS). In 2003–04, the number of new certificates for representation issued in each category fell by 3.9% and 38.4% respectively: see Legal Services Commission Annual Report 2003/04, above n 10, pp 32–33 and Table 3d. Residual legal aid funding for personal injury cases may soon disappear entirely: see Legal Services Commission A New Focus for Civil Legal Aid (July 2004).

24. See P Pleasence Report of the Case Profiling Study. Personal Injury Litigation in Practice (London: Legal Aid Board Research Unit, 1998) p 12.

25. See Department for Constitutional Affairs Judicial Statistics (2003). Tables 3.2 and 3.6 unhelpfully show only the number of personal injury proceedings issued in the Queens Bench Division at the Royal Courts in London (amounting to 16% of the total). Nor do the statistics for the county court identify personal injury claims separately, except where there was a hearing in the small claims jurisdiction (amounting to 4% of that total, according to Table 4.10). What the statistics do show is a dramatic decline in the workload of QBD overall. Between 1994 and 2003, proceedings issued fell from around 120,000 to just over 14,000 (unnumbered table, p 30). Possible (if unsubstantiated) explanations for this drop include expansion of the jurisdiction of the county court, the introduction of preaction protocols, greater resort to negotiated settlements and alternative dispute resolution, the decline in public funding, new costs rules, and greater caution by commercial and corporate litigants (who initiate the bulk of proceedings in QBD, which are actions for debt and breach of contract).

26. See above n 13, pp 11 and 12. The CRU kindly provided the author with data for claims settled, as distinct from initiated. They show a rather more mixed picture. It is unclear whether settlement data were available to the Task Force. The Task Force report, somewhat confusingly, says that the figures cited for new claims ‘ignore the fact that many claims are settled out of court’ when, of course, they do not refer to settlements at all. The CRU (now part of the Department for Work and Pensions) was set up in 1997. Its task is to recover certain social security benefits and NHS charges where a person is subsequently compensated (by an insurer, usually) in respect of the same injury or disease.

27. See UK Personal Injury Litigation reports, 2002, 2003 and 2004, summarised at http://www.researchandrnarkets.com. Datamonitor predicts that the trend will be for injury (excluding disease) claims slowly to increase by around 0.4% per annum between 2001 and 2007.

28. For example, the CRU figures relied on by the Task Force, see above n 26 and text, concern new claims initiated in the preceding three years. Since some categories of potential liability, such as medical negligence and asbestos-related occupational disease, are especially prone to reporting (and settlement) delays the evidence on claim frequency may be unreliable, particularly across such a short period.

29. Above n 13, pp 5 and 37.

30. See Report of the Royal Commission on Civil Liability and Compensation for Personal Injury (Cmnd 7054, 1978) vol 2, para 74, estimating that only 6.5% of accident victims actually recover damages. See too the later ‘Oxford survey’ reported by D Harris et al Compensation and Support for Illness and Injury (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984) p 65, suggesting a figure of 12% but with almost three-quarters of accident victims not considering the possibility of claiming damages at all. For a functionalist review of tort's (in)efficiency as a compensation mechanism see D Harris et al Remedies in Contract and Tort (Croydon: Butterworths, 2nd edn, 2002) chapter 24, trenchantly characterising it as ‘a failure judged by each and every one of the standards by which public investments are normally evaluated’.

31. See International Underwriting Association of London Third UK Bodily Injury Awards Study (March 2003), showing the average rate of increase to have been 3% per annum between 1992 and 2000. See too S Lloyd-Bostock ‘The natural history of claims for compensation after an accident’ in M Mitchell (ed) The Aftermath of Road Accidents (London: Routledge, 1996), tracing the complex relationship between perceptions of fault and decisions to claim.

32. Estimates vary as to the incidence of negligence within the NHS. There may be 850,000 ‘adverse events’ annually, half of which may be avoidable:, see Department of Health An organisation with a memory: Report of an expert group on learning from adverse events in the NHS (2000). A more recent study suggests the claim frequency rate may be closer to one claim per hundred patients damaged by negligence: see P Pleasence et al ‘The experience of clinical negligence within the general population’ (2003) 9 Clinical Risk 211.

33. See above n 13 and text.

34. The OFT report, above n 6, para 9.14, makes the important point that since insurers ‘are likely to fight hard over large claims and not waste money in defending small ones, it is often suggested that accident victims are under-compensated when their injuries are serious but over-compensated when they are trivial’.

35. On the other hand, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and it is not difficult to find media reports of claims that appear to be devoid of merit, though their accuracy and provenance may be open to question: see above n 16. The Task Force, above n 13, p 11, merely confined itself to asserting that there is a ‘perception’ that the public is more likely to seek redress than ‘ever before’. The Actuaries’ report, above n 7, did not attempt to quantify its concerns about unwarranted claims at all.

36. See Pleasence, above n 24, pp 11–13.

37. See above nn 54 and 55 and text.

38. The number of claims rose almost fifteen-fold between 1995–96 and 2002–03. Annual expenditure increased from an estimated £lm in 1974–75 to £446m in 2002–03. Where the compensation paid was below £45,000, legal costs exceeded the value of the claim in the majority of cases. See Department of Health Making Amends. A consultation paper setting out proposals for reforming the approach to clinical negligence in the NHS (2003) paras 31 and 35. Even so, a ‘no fault’ alternative to litigation was rejected as being likely to be too expensive. The number (and cost) of clinical negligence claims, almost 90% of which currently continue to receive legal aid funding, appears to be declining slowly. In 2003–04, around 6,250 claims (constituting about 1.5% of all personal injury claims) were received and the cost of settling clinical negligence cases was £422.5m: see NHS Litigation Authority Factsheet 3: information on claims (2004). See too above n 32.

39. Department of Health, above n 38, para 9, seeks to reassure critics by declaring that the primary purpose of its proposals is not to cut compensation levels but to target resources to meeting the needs of injured patients more effectively. None the less, it would be surprising if government were to be entirely sanguine about the prospect that extra investment intended to provide additional ‘frontline’ services might be swallowed up by ever more expensive compensation claims. An ‘NHS Redress Bill’ is expected sometime in 2005–06.

40. See Institute of Actuaries UK Asbestos - The Definitive Guide (November 2004), estimating future claims at between 80,000 and 200,000 and the cost to UK insurers at between £4 and £10 bn. The number of deaths is predicted to peak at 5,000 per annum between 2011 and 2015. The evidence from the US is that very large numbers of costly asbestos-related claims may overwhelm the legal system as well as defendants who are inadequately insured.

41. See Datamonitor reports, above n 27. The IUA report, above n 31, suggests the average annual rise in the cost of each motor injury claim has been 6.7%. with the number of claims having increased on average by 3% per annum. The OFT analysis, above n 6, paras 9.6 and 9.17, drawing on different sources, indicates average rises in settlement costs across all types of liability claims at between 9% and 15% per annum, depending on the gravity of the injuries.

42. [1999] 1 AC 345.

43. It was estimated in the Wells case itself that the effect of moving from the then prevailing discount rate of 4.5% to 3% increased the award by about £108,000. The Department of Health, above n 38, para 47, estimates that lowering the rate from 4.5% to 3% (in 1998) and then to 2.5% (in 2001) cost the NHS an additional £20m in 2001–02 and may cost £500m for future liabilities. If interest rate rises were to persist, the Lord Chancellor could use the Damages Act 1996, s 1(1) to recommend an increase in the discount rate, so producing a corresponding fall in damages awards.

44. See Heil v Rankin [2001] QB 272. Discussed by R Lewis ‘Increasing the Price of Pain: Damages, the Law Commission and Heil v Rankin’ (2001) 64 MLR 100.

45. In 2002, the value of Fatal Accidents Act bereavement awards was increased by SI 2002/644 from £7,500 to £10,000 per claimant (capped at £30,000 per death). Additionally, the CRU, see above n 26, has progressively been given extra powers to recoup the value of state benefits paid to claimants from defendant liability insurers who settle personal injury claims so effecting a transfer of costs from the public purse to insurers. For a discussion of this policy, see OFT report, above n 6, paras 9.21-9.28.

46. J Morgan ‘Tort, Insurance and Incoherence’ (2004) 67 MLR 384 at 399.

47. See Office of Fair Trading Liability Insurance. A report of an OFT fact finding study (August 2003); and Department for Work and Pensions Review of Employers’ Liability Compulsory Insurance, Second Stage Report (December 2003).

48. See OFT report, above n 47, paras 4.17-4.19. More recent research by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) indicates that fewer than one in ten of the 850,000 who suffer workplace illness or injury each year recover compensation from their employer or from the industrial injuries scheme. The average cost of a successful claim for damages is estimated to be £10,000. See TUC ‘A Little Compensation’Hazards, May 2005.

49. See Task Force report, above n 13, pp 3 and 18. This echoes the sorts of ‘no duty’ policy arguments familiar to tort lawyers. Nowadays, British courts appear less inclined to credit them in the absence of proof, even where it is sought to make a public body liable: see Phelps v London Borough of Hillingdon [2001] 2 AC 619.

50. See V L Mayatt (ed) Tolley's Managing Risk in Healthcare. Law and Practice (London: LexisNexis, 2nd edn, 2004) chapter 4; and Department of Health, above n 38, p 13, discussing this phenomenon in the context of allegations of clinical negligence. On the importance of trust generally, see O O'Neill A Question of Trust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

51. Establishing causal connections between (the threat of) civil liability and real world behaviour is tricky and rarely attempted, which may explain the lack of evidence on the point here. On the other hand, tort's supposed deterrent effects have commonly been assumed, at least by courts, if not always by academics. For a summary of the empirical evidence concerning deterrence, drawn mainly from North America, see Dewees et al, above n 19, pp 414–421.

52. See Task Force report, above n 13, p 12. A ‘sting’ survey of the willingness of claims farmers to take on a highly unlikely hypothetical claim provides some support for this view. See ‘How a puppy, a paving slab and a passing cyclist made a bad break worth thousands’Guardian, 23 October 2004. See too ‘Injury claims firm offers nurses cash to refer accident victims’Guardian, 16 March 2005.

53. Following the insolvency of The Accident Group, one of the insurers which underwrote its after-the-event policies is reported to be suing some 800 law firms alleging that many of the personal injury cases TAG referred to them should never have been taken up: see G West ‘Preparing for Battle’Law Sociery Gazerre, 17 March 2005. This litigation may throw light on the extent of frivolous claims.

54. See S Yarrow Just Rewards: The Outcome of Conditional Fee Cases (London: Policy Studies Institute, 2001). The Citizens’ Advice Bureaux (CABx) report, No Win, No Fee, No Chance (December 2004) para 1.5, calculates that in the first four years to 2003–04 over a million personal injury claims were brought using CFAs. It is proposed to simplify by regulation the operation of CFAs, the uplifted success fees of which inevitably increase the cost to defendants of successful claims: see Department for Constitutional Affairs Making Simple CFAs a Reality, CP 22/04 (June 2004).

55. The CABx report, above n 54, para 9, observes that CFAs ‘create perverse incentives for the legal profession and provide the conditions for cherry-picking high value cases with high chances of success’.

56. Having largely abolished civil legal aid for personal injury claims, the Labour government has been anxious to have CFAs seen as an efficient and effective replacement while denying that they promote unnecessary litigation or push up costs to defendants. See, eg, written answer given by David Lammy, Minister for Constitutional Affairs, 410 HC Official Report (6th series) written answers col 32W, 8 September 2003.

57. See Government Response to the Better Regulation Task Force Report, above n 14, accepting the need for tighter controls while allowing the Claims Standards Council (the trade body) until December 2005 to devise a scheme of self-regulation. The OFT is currently scrutinising a code of conduct drafted by the Council. In Ireland and parts of Australia, the content and location of claims advertising is regulated by legislation: see A Moms ‘Claims advertising: access or excess?’ (2005) 155 NLJ 345, 11 March 2005.

58. See Sir David Clementi Review of the Framework for Legal Services in England and Wales, Final Report (December 2004). The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) declared itself ‘bitterly disappointed’ by this failure: see press release, 15 December 2004. See too the CABx report, above n 54, bemoaning the absence of effective regulation and the misselling of legal and insurance-related products. Since 14 January 2005, claims management companies advising on or arranging (legal expenses) insurance must be authorised by the Financial Services Authority: see the Insurance Mediation Directive (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2003, SI 2003/1473.

59. The OFT report, above n 6, para 9.12, notes that the number of workplace and road traffic accidents, which give rise to the bulk of injury claims, are already low historically. The scope for further improvement may be limited and is thus expected to have only a marginal impact on the number of future claims.

60. See J Stapleton ‘In Restraint of Tort’ in P Birks (ed) The Frontiers of Liability (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) vol 2, p 84.

61. See Task Force report, above n 13, pp 3 and 14.

62. On the connections between the availability of liability insurance and the symbiotic development of negligence liabilities, see M Davies ‘The end of the affair: duty of care and liability insurance’ (1989) 9 LS 67. Cf Morgan, above n 46, advocating that tort return to its roots in individual responsibility and eschew insurance-based aspirations to provide collectivist compensation.

63. OFT report, above n 6, paras 9.9-9.11.

64. See Adams v Bracknell Forest Borough Council [2004] UKHL 29 (failure to deal with pupil's dyslexia results in ‘personal injury’ rather than mere economic loss, hence claims are more likely to attract a duty of care and to be in time within s 11 of the Limitation Act 1980); and Phelps v London Borough of Hillingdon [2001] 2 AC 619.

65. See JD v East Berkshire Community Health NHS Trust [2005] 2 WLR 993 (incompetent intervention where abuse suspected).

66. See Sutherland v Hatton [2002] 2 All ER 1; Barber v Somerset CC [2004] 1 WLR 1089. There may be in excess of 500,000 workers suffering stress-related ill health: see Health and Safety Executive Self-reported Work-related Illness SW103104 (2003-04 survey).

67. See Vowles v Evans [2003] 1 WLR 1607 (liability of match official); Condon v Basi [1985] 1 WLR 866 (participant); Watson v British Boxing Board of Control [2001] QB 1134 (regulatory body). Cf Blake v Galloway [2004] 3 All ER 315 (‘recklessness’ standard unexpectedly applied to informal game or horseplay resulting in no liability).

68. See Lister v Hesley Hall Ltd [2002] 1 AC 215 (sexual abuse by institutional carer); Mattis v Pollock (t/as Flamingo's Nightclub) [2003] 1 WLR 2158 (attack on clubber by bouncer); Godden v Kent and Medway Strategic Health Authority [2004] EWCA 1629 (refusal to strike out a claim that the Authority could be vicariously liable for the torts of a general practitioner, despite not being his employer).

69. See Page v Smith [1995] AC 155 (psychiatric injury to primary victim need not be foreseeable); AB v Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust [2004] 2 FLR 365 (successful action by parents arising from hospital's undeclared policy of retaining children's organs).

70. See Fairchild v Glenhaven Funeral Services [2003] 1 AC 32 (liability for negligent exposure to asbestos in multiple employments); and Chester v Afshar [2004] UKHL 41 (neurosurgeon liable for failing to warn of inherent risks even though patient might have consented to the operation at a later date). Cf Gregg v Scott [2005] UKHL 2 (failure to diagnose cancer promptly so reducing the patient's chances of survival from 42% to 25% not actionable).

71. See Phelps v London Borough of Hillingdon [2001] 2 AC 619; and JD v East Berkshire Community Health NHS Trust [2005] 2 WLR 993.

72. [2004] UKHL 15 at [2].

73. [2004] UKHL 15; [2004] 1 AC 46. See also, to similar effect, the consistent refusals by courts to allow motorists to shift the blame for accidents from their driving to the condition of the roads: Stovin v Wise [1996] AC 923 (obstructed sight lines at a junction); Goodes v East Sussex County Council [2000] 1 WLR 1356 (no gritting); Sundhar v Department of Transport [2004] EWCA Civ 1440 (no salting); Gorringe v Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council [2004] UKHL 15 (no ‘go slow’ warning).

74. Above n 13, pp 18 and 19. Tomlinson is described in Wattleworth v Goodwood Road Racing Co Ltd [2004] EWHC 140 at [115] as a ‘salutary reminder (at a time when, in the perception of some, a “compensation culture” prevails)’ that occupiers are ordinarily not duty bound to prevent others from taking risks inherent in activities freely undertaken.

75. This is not to say that problems of moral hazard and fraudulent claims are non-existent or should be ignored. Commercial insurers nowadays pool and exchange (claims) data. In November 2004, several local authorities set up a telephone hotline to encourage the public to ‘name and shame’ people suspected of making false compensation claims.

76. See T F Burke Lawyers, Lawsuits, and Legal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). See too R A Posner Law and Legal Theory in the UK and USA (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).

77. See above n 57 and text.

78. As Davies, above n 62, at 83, remarks, ‘In most cases, the major modern deterrent attached to legal liability is the prospect of increased insurance premiums’.

79. See DWP Report, above n 41, pp 29–35; and DWP Discussion Paper on Framework for Vocational Rehabilitation (May 2004). See too, IUNABI Working Party Psychology, Personal Injury and Rehabilitation (2004); and MIL Best Practice Guide to Rehabilitation (2004).

80. See OFT, above n 6, para 10.4.

81. See ‘Blame culture is the road to suicide’Daily Telegraph, 3 February 2004.

82. See ‘Focus: On the Road with the PM’Observer, 6 March 2005.

83. Thus, one commentator claims that the spectre of a compensation culture has become ‘the right's new bogeyman’ allowing ‘big business to associate its victims with scroungers’ and opening up ‘a new front in their perpetual war against regulation’: see G Monbiot ‘The Myth of the Compensation Culture’Guardian, 16 November 2004.

84. See C Harlow State Liability. Tort Low and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) p 132.

85. Following the collapse of two major liability insurers, the Australian Federal government came to the political judgment in 2002 that the ‘award of damages for personal injury has become unaffordable and unsustainable’ and instructed an ad hoc committee to recommend changes to the tort system: see Commonwealth of Australia, Review of the Law of Negligence. Final Report (Canberra, September 2002). The 255 page (Ipp) report contains a wide-ranging (if less than radical) set ofproposals for limiting the liability and quantum.

86. See the Queen's Speech, 17 May 2005, and ‘Law aims to head off compensation culture’ Financial Times, 18 May 2005. The ‘Compensation Bill’ itself has yet to be published. Apparently, it will ‘introduce whatever legislation may prove necessary’ to deal with invalid claims while ‘improving the compensation system for those who have a valid claim’. Measures may include ‘clarification of the common law on negligence’ and the ‘regulation of claims farmers’. At the time of writing, it is uncertain whether the Bill will be confined to personal injury claims or those against the public sector.