LW597 LAW OF OBLIGATIONS
Week 12 Guidance for Seminar Leaders on ‘Compensation Culture’
This pack accompanies the evidence pack for students on ‘compensation culture’. It contains:
- Suggested instructions for how to run the seminar; and
- Quick explanations of what each of the pieces of evidence show.
If any of this is unclear, please don’t hesitate to let me know at bpb@kent.ac.uk (as well as obviously
emailing Per as the convenor) – but I think this should provide all the information you need.
I’d also be really interested in hearing your feedback on how it goes, as we’re likely to be expanding
the number of tasks like this in future years and it would be great to learn which aspects work best.
Otherwise thanks in advance for making the seminar a success!
Ben Baumberg, 10th December 2014
© University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015
SUGGESTED INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE SEMINAR
Split the students into three groups, and assign a different side of the argument (on the next page)
to each group. You can either print the sheet a few times and hand it round, or cut it up and only
give each group one of the arguments without seeing the others – whatever you prefer. Indeed, the
rest of the instructions are only suggestions, so if you want to change anything then do!
Within each group, you will need two people to volunteer as the presenters to the rest of the
seminar (so four people in total). We strongly recommend that you neither assign this beforehand,
nor let the students do this fully independently, as our experience is that neither of these work.
Instead, go to each group in turn at the start of the class, ask if there is anyone who desperately
does not want to present, and then allocate randomly among the remaining people.
The presenters will have to make their argument to the rest of the class for 3mins in total, having up
to 1½ min each (if they need that long) to present one point each using the evidence in the pack.
The rest of the group need to help them prepare their argument – a good way of dividing this up is
for each person in the group to focus on 2 pieces of evidence, and how they are relevant to the
argument. When this has finished, you can then bring in other members of the group to try and
rebut the arguments on the other side, and ask them what they actually found most convincing (and
why).
I would use 5mins to tell them about the task, 25mins for them to prepare the argument using the
evidence pack, 10mins for them to actually do the argument, and then 5-10mins for
rebuttal/discussion, before concluding the class by bringing this all together for them (the takehome messages are: some of the claims of ‘compensation culture’ are exaggerated, and that it’s
important to use other forms of evidence to look at the context of the legal system). But just to
stress again: feel free to adapt this if you’d like to change some details of this!
© University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015
GROUP ALLOCATION ON COMPENSATION CULTURE
Argument #1: The Association of British Insurers (ABI)
You are the organisation that represents the insurance industry, and therefore you want to
minimise personal injury claims and costs as much as possible. You want to persuade people
that there is a compensation culture to put pressure on the Government, police and others to
cut claims.
Argument #2: The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL)
You are the organisation that represents personal injury lawyers, and are therefore
interested in getting as much compensation for claimants as possible (and indeed, in making
sure you take a fair share of the claims in legal costs too). You want to discourage the idea
that there is a compensation culture, particularly one that blames personal injury lawyers for
encouraging it.
Argument #3: A disinterested researcher
You are an independent academic employed by Kent Law School, asked to give independent
advice to a Select Committee inquiry into compensation culture. You have no agenda here at
all, but instead are concerned with ‘the truth’, and in particular how everything is more
complex and more uncertain that people often seem to think.
© University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015
UNDERSTANDING EACH PIECE OF EVIDENCE
Evidence #1: Norwich Union opinion poll

This could be used as evidence that there is a compensation culture, on the grounds that
people overwhelmingly feel that we’re more likely to seek compensation than we used to.

The counter is that obviously this doesn’t mean that it’s actually happened – it just means
that people think it happened, which is perhaps unsurprising given the media coverage
around this at the time (in 2004).
Evidence #2: YouGov poll

This could be used as evidence against a compensation culture, on the grounds that only
25% of people who suffered a personal injury said that they had claimed. Moreover, the
most common reasons for not claiming was that that people don’t believe in claiming
compensation, and that they did not think the illness/accident was bad enough – again,
suggestions that there is not a compensation culture.

This is not that easy to counter, but students who are aware of surveys might point out that
YouGov give us very little description of who the people they spoke to are (so the people
might not be representative), or exactly what they asked (so the question might be leading).
But there’s no obvious reason why we would doubt the validity of the figures.
Evidence #3: Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) survey

This could be used as evidence against compensation culture in similar fashion to evidence
#2: that many people who suffered injuries have not claimed. There’s also various other bits
of evidence that could be used here (that whiplash is mainly diagnosed by doctors, that
people believe that unjustified claiming is fraudulent etc).

However, it could also be used as evidence for compensation culture – if 80% of sufferers
report their symptoms accurately, then 20% of people admit they exaggerated their
symptoms! And some people may probably hide any exaggerations when speaking to
survey interviewers, so the true figure may be even higher.
Evidence #4: CRU data on personal injury claims

This is perhaps the most important table in the whole pack, and can be used in a multitude
of ways.

It partly suggests that there is a compensation culture – the total number of claims are much
higher than they used to be in the 1970s, and there was also a rise 1997/8 to 2009/10. There
are also certain types of claims that have seen particularly sharp rises, including motor
claims (associated with whiplash) and clinical negligence cases.

However, others might argue that – even if there was a rise in claims in the early 1990s –
there are no signs of a ‘compensation culture’ since then. The total number of claims rose
only relatively slightly 1997/8 to 2009/10 (from 705k to 861k), which is hardly a change
signalling a fundamental shift in claiming behaviour, and (after the way of counting
changed), there’s barely any change 2010/11 to 2013/14.

Students might even go as far as contesting the estimate from 1988 – which they are
justified in doing, as it seems to have been plucked out of thin air! And without this, we
have no idea if this is a phenomenon of the 1970s, 80s, or 90s.

On claims to employers, it is perhaps worth noting (in case any of the students have read
Lewis & Morris 2012) that the rise in claims 2000-2005 was not due to changes in claiming
© University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015
behaviour. As Lewis & Morris put it, “Between 2000 and 2005 the number of employers'
liability claims fluctuated considerably. This was largely due to the establishment in 1999 of
temporary special schemes of compensation for coalmining diseases.84 These schemes closed
in 2004 and since then the number of employers' liability claims has fallen by two thirds.
Whilst there was an increase in 2011-12, there are still fewer claims made today than in
1973.”
Note: The evidence in Part III (on numbers of injuries) is most persuasive when compared to part II
(on numbers of claims), to suggest that we might still have under-claiming in some areas.
Evidence #5: Road traffic accidents reported the police

This is evidence for compensation culture – it shows that personal injury due to road traffic
accidents has fallen substantially over time, including 1997/8. Given that claim rates for
road traffic accidents (Evidence #4) have stayed level, this suggests that people have
become more willing to claim. This argument has been used repeatedly by the insurance
industry in the last decade.

The evidence against this comes under Evidence #6.
Evidence #6: Total numbers of road traffic accidents in the UK

This is evidence against compensation culture, in two ways.

Firstly, it shows the flaws in Evidence #5 – we don’t actually know that injuries went down, it
could just be that people became less likely to report road traffic injuries to the police.
(There are some credible people who suggest this is possible, if minor injuries became more
common and severe injuries became less common).

Secondly, students can compare the number of road traffic casualties (680-920k in 2009) to
the number of road traffic personal injury claims (675k in 2009), to show that this might not
be an unreasonable level of claims. But this point is less persuasive than the parallel points
for other types of injury.
Evidence #7: Hospital data on causes of home and leisure accidents

This can be used as evidence against compensation culture, on the grounds that there are a
large number of accidents that people to hospital for each year in the UK! The list of articles
is a way of getting them to think the potential causes involved – it’s not just that people are
injured, but they are being injured by things, and (sometimes) the injury may partly be
because of the design of the thing.
Evidence #8: Injuries at work

This can be used as evidence against compensation culture, on the grounds that there are
many people who don’t claim – there are 629k self-reported injuries at work, but only 105k
claims against employers.

This can be countered by those noting that these injuries are not all the fault of employers,
which makes the comparison a much weaker argument.
Evidence #9: Reported clinical accidents

This can be used as evidence against compensation culture – the number of incidents has
been rising, which can explain the rising number of claims.
Evidence #10: Estimated clinical accidents (including unreported accidents)

This can be used as evidence for compensation culture, as it implies that the reason for the
rise in incidents in Evidence #9 may be because of better reporting.
© University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015

It can also be used as evidence against compensation culture, on the grounds that there are
a large number of potential cases, only a tiny fraction of which end up as clinical negligence
claims.
Evidence #11: Insurance industry estimates of ‘Crash for Cash’ fraud

This can be used as evidence for compensation culture, as the number of fraud cases is a
good headline-grabbing figure – which in practice has been used to grab headlines.

However, there is nothing to back up this figure with – it’s a finger-in-the-wind calculation by
the insurance industry, who have strong incentives to exaggerate this kind of thing. We
don’t know for certain that it’s wrong, but on the other hand, we can’t trust this at all.
© University of Kent Q-Step Centre 2015