Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Keen of Elie on 22 May (HL7648), how many claims for road traffic accident related personal injuries there were in 2017–18, excluding unmeritorious claims.

The term ‘unmeritorious claims’ is used by the Government to refer to a broad group of claims, which includes those where there is very little evidential basis to support the claim for injury and claims in which there has been some degree of exaggeration of injury, as well as outright fraudulent claims. The term fraud is narrower and usually refers to claims were there has been a deliberate attempt to defraud over aspects of the claim.

The Government does not collate data on unmeritorious claims, as their nature makes them difficult to accurately identify. In 2017-2018 there were around 650,000 RTA related personal injury claims registered in the UK. There are however, industry statistics available which indicate that in 2016 around 69,000 fraudulent motor insurance claims, worth £780m, were identified.