Every change to the civil litigation system in recent years has failed to address the problem effectively and increased the financial pressure on members.

The latest blow was the Lord Chancellor's sudden decision to cut the discount rate - the interest rate used by courts to calculate lump sum payments to personal injury claimants - by a drastic and unprecedented 3.25%. The new rate of minus 0.75% came into effect on 20 March and will apply to all new claims and to claims that have been made but not yet settled.

To show the profound impact this will have on compensation awards, the MDU looked at some of the GP claims we settled under the old 2.5% rate. To take just one example: a 14-year old patient with a 50-year life expectancy who was previously awarded £8.4 million would now receive a lump sum of £17.5 million, an increase of 108%.

The Lord Chancellor's action shows how far decision-making in this important area has become divorced from its real consequences. The predictable effect of this low discount rate is to inflate compensation awards dramatically. Doctors are not responsible for rising negligence costs, but NHS GPs, for example, have to pay for their own indemnity, and this change knowingly imposed by the Lord Chancellor has pushed the cost of that indemnity to an unaffordable level.

The law and the GMC both require doctors to have adequate and appropriate indemnity before they can practice. But if the government then makes indemnity prohibitively expensive, what choice does that leave hard-working GPs who are already facing unprecedented financial and workload pressures? And where does that leave patients?

The ticking clock of clinical negligence reform

Dr Christine Tomkins

The ticking clock of clinical negligence reform