THE legal fees of £330,000 paid out by Strathclyde Police to defend officers in criminal cases seem hefty and should, at the very least, be looked at ("Legal fees for defending police soar by £330,00", The Herald, December 31).
However, in terms of costs to the taxpayer, the figure pales into relative insignificance beside the £33m spent by councils in Scotland during the past five years in settling 13,000 compensation claims ("Scottish councils pay out £33m in damages", The Herald, December 26).
Most of these claims were no doubt personal injury cases. The time has surely come when the burgeoning and lucrative compensation culture should be reined in. Ways in which this might be done could include a set tariff of awards and lawyers' fees for particular injuries, particularly for less serious injuries (that is, injuries currently attracting compensation awards of less than £50,000).
Another measure would be to make sure that relatively low-value injury claims are not allowed to be litigated in the Court of Session rather than in the somewhat cheaper sheriff courts. Recommendations, which are now several years old, to transfer low-value compensation claims to the lower courts have still not been practically implemented, though a committee/ council has been set up to discuss implementation of the idea.
Above all, some would assert that the best avenue towards trimming Scotland's overblown compensation landscape is, first, to restrict lawyers' fees for settling such cases (giving them a fair but not excessive return for work done), and secondly, to try to reduce the influence of the compensation lawyer lobby on politicians, Holyrood legislation and on the Law Society of Scotland itself .
Gus Logan, WS,
24 Coates Gardens
Edinburgh.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article