ADVISE WERNER WHETHER THE BRITISH IMMIGRATION

Work Permit Law

Work Permit Law



With regard to the scenario England is in the grip of a 'compensation culture' and, consequently, a 'litigation crisis' are asserted with increased frequency.1 Concerns of this kind can be found in the columns of newspapers, in official reports, political discourse, legislative debate, and judicial decisions. Thus, in 2004, the former Trade and Transport minister, Stephen Byers, complained about the adverse effects of 'excessive litigiousness' on both the economy and the national psyche,2 while David Davis, shadow Home Secretary, gave an undertaking that a Conservative government, if elected, would cut out 'the cancer of litigation'. (Yarrow, Pp. 45-49)And at much the same time as a Private Member's bill designed to protect volunteers from negligence liability was being lost, it was judicially asserted that the 'pursuit of an unrestrained culture of blame and compensation has many evil consequences'.5 Yet, as a government commissioned report pointed out in 2003, there is usually 'very little analysis of what this term [compensation culture] means, let alone proof that such a “culture” exists'.

There may be a number of different problems. Frequently it appears that there are too many (successful) claims, at other times that compensation payouts are too costly, quite commonly that lawyers fees are excessive: sometimes a mixture of all of these. What sorts of claims should count for the purposes of discussion is also disputed. In some versions, litigation risks associated with certain commercial activities are regarded as constituting part of the 'problem'. Thus, auditors and company directors have recently pressed government for special legislative protection, essentially on the basis that in an era of increasingly complex transactions and potential catastrophe risks, unlimited personal liability is too onerous and a deterrent to (efficient) market participation.8 Other candidates for inclusion are claims before employment tribunals, largely on the basis of their number, and family law disputes because they consume the largest slice of the civil legal aid budget.

In 2002, a report by the Institute of Actuaries concluded that there is a growing compensation culture, estimating the total cost of claims at about £10 billion a year or 1 per cent of GDP.11 This is a very large sum of money, of course, though it represents a wide variety of claims, as well as their associated administrative costs and expenses. Moreover, gauging the significance of the Actuaries' headline figure is difficult unless we have some idea what other countries spend.

In 2004, the government's Better Regulation Task Force (the 'Task Force'), drawing on an international review of the cost of just tort claims published two years earlier, listed the UK's expenditure (at 0.6% of GDP) as lower than that of ten other industrialised nations, including Canada (0.8%), Australia (1.1%), Germany (1.3%) and the USA (1.9%): only Denmark spent less.13 The Task Force report, which government has since largely accepted, denied that Britain is in the grip of a compensation culture, basing itself partly on the opinion of 'almost everyone' who gave evidence to ...