Concerns over PM’s health and safety reforms
Personal injury lawyers have given a lukewarm response to the Prime Minister’s latest speech attacking the country’s health and safety culture.
David Cameron spoke to a group of small business leaders last week and said that the current situation made it much too easy for personal injury lawyers to launch action against businesses who often settle the case out of court because it is too expensive to fight it.
The PM told his audience that the government was committed to exempting a million self-employed workers from regulation, to removing the need for employers to report minor accidents and it wanted to place a limit on the amount that solicitors could earn from small-value personal injury claims.
However, David Bott, president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, has said that the government should give more information on the proposed changes and said that businesses should be made to feel confident in the knowledge they have nothing to fear from litigation as long as they take reasonable steps to avoid needless injury.