General Insurance Article - Leading PI portal backs battle against dishonest claims

 Designed to address the growing ‘compensation culture’ in Britain, the UK government has introduced Section 57 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act to slash the number of fraudulent personal injury claims and the associated costs that these claims incur.

 “Lots of genuine people don’t want to claim as they feel there’s a stigma when it comes to claiming,” said John Quail, Managing Director of Claims.co.uk. “These new rules will help combat obvious fraudulent claims and as a result remove the bad apples, encouraging genuine claimants to come forward.”

 Section 57 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act, which refers specifically to personal injury claims and fundamental dishonesty, allows courts to now strike out a whole fraudulent claim, even if there are genuine aspects to the claim.

 “Hopefully this change will lead to a fairer landscape for those who have genuinely been affected and make them feel better about coming forward,” said John. “It will make the whole process for everyone easier, and deter those who waste the courts’ time.

 “Although the legislation is welcome, we must ensure that genuine claimants do not have a fear of being victimised. It’s important to identify that there is a big difference between people who don’t know if they have grounds for a claim, and blatant fraudsters. So it’s important we don’t isolate and victimise the former, whilst weeding out the latter”, he concluded.