This report is from this week’s CNBC’s UK Exchange newsletter. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.
Few things have captured the British public’s imagination more this century than compensation.
The U.K. never used to have a compensation culture, but things began to change when, in June 1995, solicitors were allowed to charge on a “no-win, no-fee” basis for the first time.
The thinking was that, with the courts really only open to the very rich or the very poor (the latter supported by legal aid), it would widen access to justice. Warnings that it would lead to unscrupulous and speculative claims from so-called “ambulance chasers” were ignored.
Sure enough, by 2000, compensation claims had quadrupled from their 1992 level and begun appearing in areas, like stress-related problems against employers, where they were previously unknown.
