Severely injured people in Scotland remain at risk of being undercompensated due to a seven-year delay in bringing in new court rules, lawyers warn.
The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) says it is frustrated that the Scottish Government has not yet introduced rules to allow courts to impose orders so compensation can be paid in structured payments throughout an injured person’s life, rather than in one large lump sum.
“Compensation is paid through a periodical payment order (PPO) by the insurance company of the person or organisation responsible for injuring someone, such as in a road crash or through negligent hospital treatment,” explained Gordon Dalyell, APIL’s Scotland representative.
“PPOs can be preferential to a one-off lump sum in some cases because they provide much-needed certainty for injured people and their families. The compensation will be accurate and move with inflation over the coming years, and it will provide for ongoing needs such as care and equipment,” he said.
“People who receive compensation in lump sums could easily be undercompensated as they are expected to invest the money to make it stretch.
“Victims with life-changing injuries, including brain and spinal injuries, must take risks on the stock market in to order to get their full and fair compensation. It puts them under great pressure,” said Mr Dalyell.
“But PPOs are not readily available to victims in Scotland as we are still waiting for new rules to be drafted as part of the Damages (Investment Returns and Periodical Payments) (Scotland) Act 2019. As the delay rolls on, more and more vulnerable people are forced to accept lump sum settlements when a PPO could be a fairer and more stable route to redress,” he said.
“There is no good reason why the options for compensating catastrophically injured people in Scotland have not already been brought in line with those available in England and Wales,” he added.
APIL has responded to a consultation by the Scottish Government on how it calculates how much compensation injured people receive.