Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

101A: After Clause 11, insert the following new Clause— ““Report reviewing claims for clinical negligence (1) In discharging his or her functions under section 1(4) above, the Lord Chancellor shall have regard to the provisions of this section. (2) The Lord Chancellor may appoint an independent person to review claims for clinical negligence and means of improving the modes, procedures, financing and outcomes relating to the same as he or she shall specify. (3) Such a review may in particular address the accessibility, cost, effectiveness, openness, fairness, proportionality and speediness of such claims. (4) After the reviewer must compile a report of his or her conclusions. (5) As part of those conclusions the reviewer may propose such scheme or schemes (voluntary or otherwise) as he or she shall see fit. (6) In this section ““claims”” shall mean claims and complaints made by patients receiving services provided or commissioned in England in respect of a liability in tort or contract owed in respect of personal injury or loss arising in connection with breach of a duty of care owed to any person in connection with the diagnosis of illness, or in the care or treatment of any patient of an NHS body, or of a primary care or independent provider. (7) The Lord Chancellor must lay before Parliament a copy of a report compiled under subsection (4).””