Justine Greening: Britain is the whiplash capital of Europe

By
Justine Greening

Last updated at 10:57 PM on 4th February 2012

Transport Secretary Justine Greening: 'We are already taking solid steps to reduce the cost of insurance and make the system fairer for motorists'

Transport Secretary Justine Greening: ‘We are already taking solid steps to reduce the cost of insurance and make the system fairer for motorists’

With so many families tightening their belts, there is a growing feeling of deep unfairness about motor insurance premiums.

Cars are a necessity for most people, an essential part of everyday life that allow us to get to work, do the school run, or visit our relatives.

But it does not seem to matter how experienced or careful a driver you are, the chances are that insuring your car is costing more than ever before.

I know good drivers whose premiums have doubled recently for no apparent reason and I am sure many readers will do, too.

The average insurance bill today is £410 – a 17 per cent rise on last year.

But if you are the wrong age or live in the wrong postcode, it gets even worse.

Young people had to cough up for a 51 per cent rise last year, bringing average premiums to £2,500 for a young man and £1,400 for a young woman.

There is no getting away from it: the cost of car insurance is bearing increasingly little relationship to the real world, where motorists act more responsibly than ever and accidents really do happen less often.

If we look at the facts, driving tests have never been more rigorous and driving has never been safer.

Fresh road safety figures out last week show that while people are sadly still killed and seriously injured on our roads, the number of victims fell to 1,900 last year from 3,450 a decade before.

With this in mind, it would be reasonable to expect premiums to come down, or at least hold steady. But the cost of cover continues on a relentless climb.

We are already taking some solid steps to reduce the cost of insurance and make the system fairer for motorists.

We have cracked down on uninsured
driving, which puts at least £30 on the price of each premium, by making
it illegal to own an uninsured car.

Young people had to cough up for a 51 per cent rise last year, bringing average premiums to £2,500 for a young man and £1,400 for a young woman

Young people had to cough up for a 51 per cent rise last year, bringing average premiums to £2,500 for a young man and £1,400 for a young woman (posed by models)

This – combined with the welcome fall in road casualties – should be reducing insurers’ costs, enabling savings to be passed on to customers.

And yet this has clearly not happened. So it is time to get  to the bottom of it.

Earlier last week, the Government announced measures to transform the levels of customer service provided by garages.

We will work with the industry to drive up standards and the quality of work by supporting the development of industry codes and better information on the performance of garages.

Mystery shopper tests will also help to improve standards and protect consumers.

These will mean better quality and longer-lasting car repairs and tackle the problem of garages that overcharge simply because a repair is covered by an insurance policy.

Can anyone ever suffer whiplash if their car is nudged from behind at 3mph?

We also recognise the link between premiums and referral fees in personal injury cases.

These occur when cases are passed between claims management companies, insurance companies and law firms, all of which charge each other a fee for ‘referring’ the claim up the line.

The raft of fees means a windfall for everyone involved in the complex chain of charges – except ordinary policyholders who are left to pick up the bill.

This is why we are banning such fees and reforming ‘no-win, no-fee’ arrangements to tackle soaring legal costs.

The Mail on Sunday is absolutely right to campaign on the spiralling cost of motor insurance and has highlighted a near-epidemic in whiplash injury claims fuelled by ambulance-chasing lawyers.

Sadly, Britain is now the whiplash capital of Europe, with more than 1,500 claims a day.

From texting and cold-calling drivers involved in accidents, to running high-profile advertising campaigns, lawyers are encouraging people to claim for whiplash injuries sustained in the most minor of incidents – which barely damage the car’s paintwork, never mind its driver.

The scent of easy profits has made this a growth industry. Some estimates suggest a doubling in the past year in the number of firms offering claims management services and ‘no-win, no-fee’ legal representation.

The seemingly ever upward trajectory of premiums raises some serious questions. Can we learn lessons from places such as Germany where there is a minimum speed limit below which whiplash cannot be claimed?

Can anyone ever suffer whiplash if their car is nudged from behind at 3mph? Should claimants be required to provide more than one medical opinion to prove they have suffered whiplash?

How can new technologies be developed by motor manufacturers and insurers to help bring down the costs of insurance?  Is there enough competition in the motor trade, particularly with respect to expensive car parts, to bring down repair costs?

As Transport Secretary, I believe it is time to confront these issues head on and I’m determined to take a serious look at what can be done.

The first challenge will be to get the insurance industry to acknowledge that everybody has a collective responsibility to tackle this. It is not good enough to agree there is a problem, but then claim it is everyone else’s fault.

But I also know it is going to take more than the Department for Transport acting alone to sort out these questions.

That is why, in the coming months, I will be getting together with colleagues from the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department of Health and the Home Office to work jointly in finding some real solutions.

The Prime Minister will soon convene a summit looking at all aspects of the insurance industry and I want to make sure motor insurance is centre stage of any new thinking.

I am also keen to know the sorts of challenges being faced by insurance policyholders up and down the country and will keep a close eye on the experiences of Mail on Sunday readers to inform our work.

These are testing times and the public’s sense of fair play will not tolerate unwarranted, and increasingly unaffordable, increases in premiums. Car insurance firms must take a hard look at their prices and start treating customers fairly.

Premiums are not simply the price of an insurance policy, they are a contract of mutual responsibility and insurers must live up to their side of the bargain.

It is time for them to get a grip and put their houses in order.

Here’s what other readers have said. Why not add your thoughts,
or debate this issue live on our message boards.

The comments below have not been moderated.

Justine, like Alise look in the mirror and it will tell you the truth you are not telling the people. The legal authority is with the Financial Services Authority, which regulates all insurance matters.
Therefore claims firms mmust be registered. The real problem is however, the FSA
is not known as every arriving until the horse has bolted and the stable burnt down.

Alice, you havent thought about the problem with insurance, what most uninsured drivers do, is get the cheapest policy they can, usually by internet now, get policy form through the post (someone even email it), take said policy to POST Office (if there still any available), along with VALID MOT Certificate, TAX the Car, get TAX Disc, ring up Insurance Company and cancel Policy or cancel Direct Debit from Bank. there you go one TAX Disc, no insurance, and if you get the insurance via internet, distance selling regulations allow you grace period to cancel the policy and get refund.
What they should do is chanage the procedure, instead they should check to see if the car HAD valid insurance for the previous 12 months before issuing a Tax Disc. If it didn’t no Disc would be issued, it should be highlighted immediately by the computer same as ANPR, and sent to the Local Police Force, who could arrange for a company to remove the vehicle from the road, until proven that they had insurance.

Of course all of the premiums will just plummet if this happens.Well known fact that insurers just want to keep your prices down, they aren’t interested in their huge profit margins at all are they?

With out a doubt another by product of new labour,I live in Thailand and Insurance there is fairly cheap only their are limited liabilities i.e. fully comp they only payout pro rata of vehicle value but I’ve had a claim there and the car was repaired the same week fully paid up by the insurance company,and cars are expensive there so people drive more carefully and a whiplash claim that would involve a detailed report and x rays from a doctor and a false insurance claim you could end up in jail

“Justine Greening: Britain is the whiplash capital of Europe – and I’m going to stop it”………………….Ha Ha, heard it all before from inept Ministers on a variety of issues that are eventually put on the back burner. They know most of the Public have short term memory loss, and hope the issues in question quietly fade away from memory. Meanwhile it’s Business as usual for all the Companies/solicitors etc. I wonder how many MP’s hold down positions on a lot of the boards of them.

The whole bleeding country is the crime capital of Europe. Nationalise the insurance industry; that’s the only way you’ll stop these greedy people.

Insurance Companies are just taking people for a ride . They cannot be bothered to investigate properly all accidents, especially those where claims of whiplash are involved . These claims are possibly as much as 95 % false. It should be made a criminal offence for claims that are false and subject to a prison term . Insurance companies should be made to investigate all claims of this type properly, instead of what they do now by accepting claims, and increasing the premiums for drivers to an extent that is bordering on theft . Police are also involved in this scam and are collecting money for passing on details of accidents. This kind of behaviour by the Police should be stopped immediately

All motor insurance claims that involve injury should be decided in a court of law with the losing side paying for all costs. If people making dodgy claims faced a possibility of having to pay it might make them think twice before going to court.

I was involved in a five car crash outside Bigger in Scotland ten years ago and the guy in the last car who smashed into me climbed out of his car and said. Ah well thats another claim for whiplash. When i asked him about this he said he had three prior claims in the past two years and was looking forward to the payout. The Police who turned up at the scene asked me if i was ok. When i said yes i think so he said get a claim in for whiplash anyway everyone else will.Two things there first the driver who crashed into me why did his insurance company keep insuring him and why was the Policeman advising me to claim even though i said i was ok. Insurance companys must take part of the blame as they keep insuring these people and the Police have to start looking at the problem properly not just as an everyday thing.

You can’t get a tax disc without insurance and an mot
If you can I’d like to know how

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