Paralympians warn legal aid reforms will penalise serious accident victims

Hopes of rehabilitation are likely to be hit by cost-cutting plans, warn skier and gold medal-winning swimmer Two of Britain’s leading paralympians fear the government’s shakeup of the legal aid system will have a severe impact on the ability of seriously injured people to claim adequate compensation. Baroness Masham of Ilton, who won gold in the 25m breast stroke in the first Paralympic games in 1960, and Talan Skeels-Piggins, who represented Britain at skiing in last year’s Winter Paralympics, are urging ministers to rethink the reforms drawn up by Lord Justice Jackson. Their high-profile intervention will highlight the plight of victims of serious accidents who require significant resources to rebuild their lives. Jackson’s cost-cutting reforms include a proposal to abolish the “success fee” paid to a claimant’s solicitor by the defendant’s insurer. Instead, claimants will pay their own solicitor’s fees, which would be capped to a maximum 25% of the damages awarded. To “soften” the blow, the government will increase the ceiling for damages payouts by 10%. But legal experts argue that the reforms, designed to save taxpayers more than £350m a year, will have serious financial consequences for severely injured people and warn that the imposition of a cap on fees would see solicitors declining to take on complex accident litigation claims. “Under the proposals, accident victims who have successfully made a claim will now be liable to pay their own solicitors’ ‘success fees’, which are likely to be equivalent to a significant proportion of their damages,” said Des Hudson, chief executive of the Law Society, which has launched a campaign group, Sound Off For Justice, to fight the proposals. “This will have a particularly serious impact on those high-risk and complex claims where the victims have suffered traumatic injuries,” Hudson warned. “Many cases may become uneconomic to pursue and victims who have suffered serious injury through no fault of their own will then have to rely upon state funding for the rest of their lives.” Sound Off For Justice warned that, if the reforms were introduced, prospective paralympians would find it “very difficult, if not impossible, to rehabilitate their lives and get the vital support and financial assistance that they will need to succeed in sport”. Masham, a former paraplegic sportswoman of the year, said there was increasing disquiet within the legal and medical communities about the proposed changes and pledged to fight them when they come before Parliament in the autumn. “The trouble is that when you try to save money you hit the most vulnerable,” said Masham, president of the Spinal Injuries Association, which is seeking a judicial review of the reforms on the grounds that ministers have failed to adequately consider their impact on disabled people. “People who have broken their necks or backs need all the compensation they can get.” Skeels-Piggins, who took to the ski slopes within a year of being paralysed from the chest down in a motorbike crash in 2003, said the huge costs involved in ensuring that a severely injured person received adequate rehabilitation meant potential reductions in compensation payouts would have a big impact on how they chose to spend the rest of their life. “When limits are put on people with regard to what they can claim because somebody else has caused them to have this accident, this new life, you are stopping them from reaching their potential,” Skeels-Piggins said. “If ministers spent a year in a wheelchair, they might take a bit more time before they make any of these rash decisions.” The legal aid system has been criticised for resulting in large payouts to lawyers and encouraging a “compensation culture”. Supporters of the Jackson reforms say they are long overdue and redress an imbalance in the system that sees defendants hit with significant costs as a result of defending themselves against no-win, no-fee lawyers. Ministers also believe the new system will see an end to “trivial” small claims that could be settled out of court. But Nigel Muers-Raby, chair of the Consumer Justice Alliance, accused the government of “choosing to paint injured victims as spurious claimants, driving a mythical compensation culture”. He added: “It deliberately fails to acknowledge that what the compensation victims are awarded is used to rebuild shattered lives. Some will never earn a wage again. Many will need special care for the rest of their lives.” Experts suggest many compensation cases are lost and that the current system ensures “winning” cases pay for “losing” ones. In medical negligence cases, for example, around 40% of claims are unsuccessful. The introduction of a capped fee would see solicitors fight only the more simple compensation claims, according to lawyers. “Complex cases require detailed investigations by the claimant’s solicitor which are expensive and time-consuming,” said Rob Bhol of DBS Law. “It is only possible for solicitors to carry out a thorough search of the evidence in every claim because of the current funding arrangements.” A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman denied that the reforms would hinder deserving cases. “The current system can encourage excessive, costly and unnecessary litigation,” she said. “There is little financial risk for those bringing cases, but defendants can face enormous costs which discourage them from fighting cases where there is justification to do so. Plus we can see a perverse situation in which lawyers are awarded a greater proportion of payouts than the person who has been wronged.” Legal aid Disability Paralympics 2012 Daniel Boffey Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk

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