Ms Dorothea Dowling:

The whiplash awards will end up being a lot lower than is the case now and that is the way it is to be done in the future. The law has changed; that is the Court of Appeal.

Since then, from looking at the published judgments, the High Court judges are not following that direction from the Court of Appeal. If the High Court judges are not following a direction from the Court of Appeal, they are most certainly not going to follow a direction from the executive or from a book prepared by the PIAB. The second reason why it should not be based on settlements by insurers is that insurers are telling the Government - and this committee, I suspect - that High Court awards have gone up by 34% when they have not. That would mean that they have been telling their staff that they are going to have to pay up to 34% more on High Court cases to get rid of them. They have actually been throwing money away.

Alternatively, when we produced the original book of quantum to take the "guessing game" out of it, as one academic called it, we did not rely on data. We had a professional person who is expert in this area, Dr. Brian Greenford, who went in and examined the actual files. He also went over to England to examine files there. At that time, our damages were 12 times what they were in the UK. They are now twice what they are in the UK. There may be reasons on a insurer's file why a certain amount of money is paid out. The claimant does not feel confident about the case and takes half the value. If one only takes the data, which is the final settlement figure and seems to be all the PIAB have, one does not see that nuance or realise that a claimant thought that he or she was on the back foot or that the insurance company paid less that the claim was worth. Therefore, data in itself are not sufficient. There has to be the qualitative and well as the quantitative aspect. I also have a trust issue in regard to data from the industry, in light of the MIAB's experience over the years.