The Government’s implementation of a new online claims portal, currently set for April 6, will enable adult claimants bring claims without the use of a lawyer. However, the new system will exclude children, meaning they will have to pay for their own lawyers to receive compensation following a car crash.
At the same time, changes to payout rules will cut the fees earned by lawyers who will also lose work to the new portal. They say they will earn so little that they will not be able to represent under-18s at all. This means that children – who cannot use the portal – will either have to finance a lawyer from their own pocket upfront or drop their hopes of compensation, all at a time that they are suffering from injury.
Matthew Maxwell Scott, of the Association of Consumer Support Organisations (ACSO), said: “Children can’t use the new portal because the Government has said they can’t, so their only recourse to justice is to get a lawyer.”
To make matters worse, under the new system lawyers representing children cannot reclaim their costs from the losing side’s insurer, and instead would have to take their fees from the damages awarded to the child.
Furthermore, the level of those damages will fall due to the introduction of a new tariff system, and lawyers would only be entitled to a maximum of 25pc of this lower payout.
Claimant lawyers say the outcome is that their fees would fall so much they will not be able to afford to represent children in court.
ACSO has written to the MoJ about the issue.