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'Unfortunately, what we often see in lower cost claims is a deeply unfair system where unscrupulous law firms cream off excessive legal costs that dwarf the actual damages recovered. We believe this creates an adversarial culture of litigation, which is inflating insurance premiums and drawing away resource from the NHS at a crucial time.'

This entire paragraph contains too many questionable claims :-

"We often see..." : How often ?
"Lower cost claims" : What's one of them ?
"Deeply unfair system..." : Who created the system ? Incidentally, the current system isn't "unfair" - experienced Judges oversee it and ensure that costs are kept in-check.
"Unscrupulous law firms" : Name them and deal with them. That's what the SRA is for.
"Legal costs that dwarf the actual damages" : That is because these (often contested - and often wrongly contested) claims are fraught with difficulty and strenuously fought on both sides (rightly so) - that involves time and in turn, cost.
"An adversarial culture of litigation" : Had to crowbar in the "culture" reference so as to reinforce the existence of the non-existent compensation culture (the ABI will be pleased). Litigation is adversarial by definition. Jeremy Hunt should probably have been given a heads up on this by his Justice Secretary (presuming she knows...).

All too often a medical mistake happens and the hospital trust dusts down the nearest available manager to go on television to say "We're sorry for what happened and lessons have been learnt...".

When in fact they should say :-

"We're very sorry for failing to admit liability at an early stage to alleviate the strain on the victim/victims family during what will have been a difficult time. We acknowledge that our conduct during the litigation process was atrocious and we could have saved both sides time and money by holding up our hands at the outset. We accept that our conduct will result in a compensation and costs payout. This will be paid by the trust managers personally from their bonuses as the running costs of the hospital are ring-fenced so as to mitigate the risk of this type of mistake again. Lessons probably won't be learnt as we don't really have a mechanism for teaching someone how not to make a mistake and we certainly don't intend to train our lawyers to admit liability at an early stage".

This Government really seems intent on only hearing one side of a story and using every opportunity to convince the public that there is only one side to the story.