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My concern is that it will be those cases where lessons can often be best learnt that will suffer the most and claims under the Fatal Accidents Act are likely to be one of the hardest-hit areas.

I am inundated with cases for bereaved families, seeking representation at an Inquest (costs rarely recoverable) and also with their clinical negligence claim. Even as it stands, these cases barely break even in terms of the base costs of running them (i.e. pre-profit) and some result in a loss.

Let's look at a fairly standard award / settlement:
Statutory Bereavement Award - £12,800
PSLA - £3,000
Funeral Expenses etc. - £3,500
Total: £19,300

Even allowing for the odd care and other costs, unless there is a dependency claim, most of these cases will fall foul of a £25k cap.
Cap the recoverable fees at £3k and this makes it impossible to even consider helping these families, as we will have to focus on the £25k+ cases.

The injustice of Trust's negligently killing someone and then using public money to instruct panel solicitors to represent them at these inquests, but not allowing the bereaved families the same access to funding for representation, is perverse.

Doubtless the system needs an overhaul, but this needs to be done in the interests of justice and fairness to both the defendants and claimants. The mechanisms in place (i.e. assessment proceedings) are there to deal with unreasonable costs and I would argue, are being used. Having worked in this area for a considerable number of years, the single biggest driver for avoidable costs is the conduct of Trust's and the NHSLA in not dealing with the cases appropriately.

Clinical negligence is not like standard PI - EVERY aspect is argued, irrespective of merits. Of a current caseload of 50 clinical negligence matters, I have 2 admissions of breach of duty. Compare that to my PI caseload of 25 multi-track matters, where I have 2 denials (i.e. 4% v 92%). This is not an anomaly.