The cost of clinical negligence claims against the NHS has soared due to ambulance-chasing lawyers, the official spending watchdog has found.
Over the past decade the cost of damages plus legal bills has quadrupled to £1.6billion – and is set to double again to £3.2billion within four years.
The National Audit Office (NAO) warned the bill for NHS blunders could get even worse as waiting lists get longer, increasing the risk that diseases are missed.
It confirmed that another factor behind the rise is an increase in the number of cases related to mistakes on maternity wards.
In a highly-critical report, the NAO pinned much of the blame for the huge increase on no-win no-fee lawyers who encourage patients to take out claims and then charge exorbitant fees if they win.
Last night Meg Hillier, Labour MP and chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee, said costs of clinical negligence claims are ‘spiraling out of control’
This has led to a situation where the amount of taxpayers’ money going towards claimants’ legal fees has risen at a much faster rate than the amount going in damages to affected families.
In 2016/17, the claimant’s legal costs exceeded the damages awarded in 61 per cent of cases worth £250,000 or less.
Last night Meg Hillier, Labour MP and chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee, said: ‘The costs of clinical negligence claims are spiralling at a time of immense financial pressures on our National Health Service, taking scarce resources away from frontline services and patients.
‘The Department of Health and Ministry of Justice have been too slow to work together to turn the tide, with actions to save £90million a year by 2020/21 a drop in the ocean in the face of forecast costs of £3.2billion a year by 2021.
‘We need Government to take a good hard look at the financial and personal costs of clinical negligence.’
The NAO found that the number of claims against the NHS has doubled to 10,400 a year since 2006/7.
Over the same time, the cost to the taxpayer has increased fourfold from £400million to £1.6billion. The NAO said it believed the cost would rise to £3.2billion by 2020/21.
The costs are split between the damages paid to victims of negligence, and that going to lawyers.
Auditors found while damages had increased by 316 per cent over the decade, this had been outstripped by claimant legal costs – up 533 per cent. By contrast, defence legal costs have hardly risen at all.
Much of this increase is powered by no-win no-fee lawyers, who target people who want to put in low-value claims.
The report said: ‘Since 2006/07, most of the increase in the number of claims and claimant legal costs has been in claims funded through ‘no-win no-fee’ agreements.’
Changes introduced in 2013 have slightly reduced legal costs, but the NAO said it was not certain that this trend would continue.
Niall Dickson, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents trusts, said ‘we can’t go on’ with the NHS spending so much on litigation
The NAO also accused lawyers of dragging cases out. Since 2010 there has been a big increase in the time taken to resolve claims from 300 to 426 days, with every extra day adding £40 to costs.
And it warned: ‘The recent decline in the NHS’s performance against key waiting time standards may increase the risk of an increasing number of future claims.
‘For example 39 per cent of current claims are related to failures or delays in diagnosis or treatment of a condition, and such occurrences are likely to increase if waiting times are longer.’
Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said it was unlikely that proposed actions by the Department of Health and the NHS Resolution quango to contain the rising cost of clinical negligence claims are unlikely to stop the growth.
He said: ‘The cost of clinical negligence in trusts is significant and rising fast, placing increasing financial pressure on an already stretched system.
‘NHS Resolution and the Department are proposing measures to tackle this, but the expected savings are small compared with the predicted rise in overall costs.
‘At £60billion, up from £51billion last year, the provision for clinical negligence in trusts is one of the biggest liabilities in the government accounts, and one of the fastest growing.
‘Fundamentally changing the biggest drivers of increasing cost will require significant activity in policy and legislation, areas beyond my scope.’
Niall Dickson, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents trusts, said: ‘We cannot go on like this with the NHS spending more and more on litigation.
‘This rising tide of litigation is draining the NHS of resources and must be urgently addressed. It seems madness that we are now paying out sums greater than almost any other country in the world, when we have a universal, government funded system of healthcare.’