I am grateful the Gazette was kind enough to make reference to my challenge to the Ministry of Justice to do something more radical than raise the small claims limit – that is to say, address the delivery of legal services within the personal injury sector and other sectors of legal services. But I note that other publications whose market is precisely the profiteering intermediary and the complicit will not even acknowledge my submission.
In this context, and with knowledge of the voraciousness of the PI market, it is hard to retain respect for institutional lobby groups like APIL which tweeted: ‘There is no need for whiplash reform – there is no evidence for it.’
This is not turning a blind eye to disreputable practices that have led to the juggernaut heading to crush their businesses; it is propaganda as bad of the MoJ’s own poorly conceived and even more poorly argued justification for reform.
Perhaps if the profession would face its own lamentable past (even back beyond the chaos created by Claims Direct et al in the 1990s, to the accident management boom), and endorse the need to eject the encroaching low-skilled, well-funded intermediary, the unhealthy aroma that pervades the PI sector might abate. This may help the delivery of social justice, which is surely the only justification for the existence of personal injury solicitors.
John Holtom, consultant solicitor, Legal Solutions Partnership, Luton
