Mr. Stephen Watkins:

The Courts Service's annual report for 2015, which was published in July, lists about 18,000 cases where personal injury suits were issued. That would include medical negligence cases that would never come to us in the first place. The balance would be made up of cases where we issued an authorisation because the award was rejected by the claimant, cases where the insurer did not consent to us assessing the case and cases we do not assess, which the legislation authorises us to release. These would be wholly psychological cases where the claim might only include post-traumatic stress disorder.

There would also be a certain kind of case of abuse in that with which we would not deal. There would be other cases in respect of which there may be pre-existing injuries from previous accidents and complications such that we would not assess those cases. What we do not have is a breakdown of the court writs, which would be useful. However, it is probably reasonable to say that most of the rejected cases will end up in litigation.