The Wardman Wire

Continuing in the series of ramblings on health and safety while Matt’s away.

Ask the man in the street – or at least the man in my office – what he thinks and he’ll tell you that compensation culture definitely exists. Ask the TUC and apparently it doesn’t. So who’s right?

Apparently we spend less percentage of our GDP on claims than any other European country with the exception of Denmark. Of course this wonderful statistic doesn’t take into account that our legal systems differ so widely that it’s a bit like saying oranges make better orange juice than apples do.

Let’s get away from the numbers for a moment and see how people feel. Sir Digby Jones who has recently helped to launch a programme about a sensible approach to risk in schools had this to say in 2005 while still Director General of the CBI

“Unless you educate children about risk, get them to understand it, get them to embrace it, then we will fail as a nation and fall behind our economic rivals…..We are saying to them you can have rights until they are coming out of your pores. But responsibilities, taking charge of your own actions? We don’t seem to have got it. We are trying to create a nation of victims.”
So he certainly believes in the compo culture.

In a speech at University College, London in 2005 the then Prime Minister Tony Blair said:

“Then there are the legal claims. People are entitled to sue. And often the most outlandish cases that are brought are dismissed. But their headlines live on, create a myth and the myth is acted upon. Here in Britain, whatever the actual state of the so-called compensation culture, the perception of it and the effects of that perception are real”

So he believes in the perception of the compo culture.

Quite how that differs from the real thing is beyond a simple safety manager to understand.

The Department for Constitutional and Media Affairs issued a consultation document this summer relating to the law on damages, which says that the government’s programme of work intends to: “stop a compensation culture from developing .. (and) tackle perceptions that can lead to a disproportionate fear of litigation and risk averse behaviour”

So even the DCMA believes there is the potential for a compo culture.

What do I think? I’ve been dealing with personal injury claims brought against my employer now for about 10 years so I feel qualified to comment. It’s true that we see fewer claims now than we did a decade ago. In general the injuries are less serious and claims for the traditional industrial diseases like deafness and asbestosis are rarer. However there’s a really big difference. I see claims now for the sort of trivial accident that we would have laughed off ten years ago. I see claims where not only has the employee had no time off work but they can’t show any lasting damage or pain and suffering either. More often than not they get a few thousand quid – pays for the kids’ Christmas presents thank you very much – and their lawyer gets two or three times as much in costs.

Am I sick of seeing this? You bet I am. Is there a real danger of this compo culture growing? Maybe. Like Sir Digby said, we need to teach our children more about their responsibilities and less about their rights. Only then will we avoid the slide into a US-style claims culture, which has been running at nearly 2% of their GDP.

I’m getting closer to talking about those conkers.