Unilateral consensus on compensation

Compensation must be one of the most used - and abused - concepts in early 21st-century Britain. Everyone wants to be compensated for something, but nobody wants to pay it. Crudely simplistic? Maybe, but not far from the truth.

According to the Daily Mail and many in the insurance industry, we are in the grip of a US-style compensation culture. Prove it, cry the claimant lawyers in response. This has been the sorry state of the debate on a crucial issue for the last couple of years. But this looks as if it is about to change. Facts exist that both prove and disprove the phenomenon, but consensus that something is wrong is emerging.

Public sector risk aversion is driven by a fear of compensation culture, the perception is becoming a reality through its consequences.

The government's Better Regulation Task Force has recently produced a report that starts by dismissing compensation culture as an 'urban myth'; Norwich Union has simultaneously produced research suggesting it is costing insurers billions of pounds. These are conflicting analyses but the conclusions are almost identical: fast-track, non-adversarial settlement of small claims, diminished role for lawyers in small claims, greater use of rehabilitation with personal injury cases. A strange consensus around what needs to be done about something that can not even be agreed is a problem.

In parliament, concern about the detrimental effect that fear of legal action has had on voluntary organisations - the backbone of many communities - has led Tory backbencher Julian Brazier to use his privileged position in the ballot for Private Members' Bills to promote a measure to encourage volunteering, which proposes to give volunteers greater protection from legal action. This has received widespread support across the political spectrum and is another sign that attitudes towards compensation are changing for the better.

If consensus emerges about where we want to get to before we agree about where we are starting from, that will fine. The destination should be a fair and efficient compensation system in which people have easy access to a wide range of financial and non-financial redress when damage is done to them by the negligence of others.