Ministers rein in the lawyers who overcharge NHS millions

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/11/ministers-cap-nhs-lawyers

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Ministers are clamping down on lawyers who overcharge the NHS in clinical negligence cases – earning in some cases 10 times what their client receives in compensation – by setting a cap on their fees.

As part of a Department of Health plan to save the NHS up to £80m a year, legal costs for claims up to £100,000 would be fixed. The lawyer’s fee would reflect a percentage of the compensation received by the patient.

Ben Gummer, the health minister, is pushing through the changes in a bid to reduce the legal fees bill paid out over clinical negligence claims, which amounted to £259m in 2013-14. Currently, there is no limit on legal fees even if the compensation claim is small, meaning lawyers can claim extortionate fees for low-cost cases.

In one case, a source at the Department of Health said, a lawyer pocketed £175,000 while the patient received just £11,800 in damages. In another, the legal bill was more than £80,000 while the patient only received £1,000, although the legal bill was later reduced to less than £5,000 by the courts after a successful challenge by NHS Litigation Authority.

The authority saved the NHS more than £74m by challenging excessive legal costs in 2013-14, and the proposals to put strict limits on legal bills will help it further. Limits have already been introduced for other areas of personal injury claims, such as road traffic accidents and employers’ and public liability.

The detailed proposals are being considered by ministers before a formal consultation in the autumn.

The savings will go alongside a £2bn budget increase for the NHS this year, set out by George Osborne in the last autumn statement, and a further £8bn increase per year above inflation by 2020, which was requested in the NHS’s long-term plan.