Having grudgingly allowed a concession on the issue of legal aid for clinical negligence – but only insofar as it affects newborn babies or those injured in the womb – the Department of Justice has come up with another wheeze for clawing the money back again. It intends to apply what it calls a Supplementary Legal Aid Scheme to recoup up to 25% of damages from successful claimants, ie those whose lives have blighted from birth by medical negligence. This is, apparently, to fund other legal aid cases – assuming there are any.

The department's impact assessment claims that the deduction will be from damages "other than those for future care and loss". However, it also admits that the data it has "does not break down to allow future care and loss cost to be excluded". So they've had a guess at it!

As may be expected, the medical charity Action against Medical Accidents is outraged and has mounted an online petition to nip the scheme in the bud.

Its chief executive Peter Walsh is quoted in the Law Society Gazette as stating: "In effect it is an extra tax on the most vulnerable and deserving victims in society and would make it unrealistic to take cases forward on legal aid, making a mockery of the so-called concession made to leave these cases 'in scope' for legal aid. In other words it is as good as scrapping legal aid for all clinical negligence cases through the back door."

Apart from the obvious impression of ill grace that the move creates, the entire strategy of penalising people for daring to ask for redress when they have been damaged at birth beggars belief.

On other issues of medical negligence, there is a spat going on between the Medical Defence Union and APIL. The medics' insurance company claims the burgeoning number of negligence claims is due to conditional fee arrangements, while the personal injury lawyers say that, contrariwise, the doctors should see to their own standards. Of course, it could just be that the parlous state of the NHS is making mistakes an everyday inevitability. Doctors rushing from clinic to meeting to ward to meeting to theatre to meeting may not be in the best position to maintain the highest standards. Add to that the fact that a deadline looms for getting your claim in or you won't get legal aid and...guess what.

The Law Society has announced it has cancelled its planned Law Conference 2012. The reason given was that "it has become clear that the geographical location presented something of an obstacle to the intended audience". And that location: was it the Outer Hebrides or the depths of the Borneo jungle? No, it was the Celtic Manor Resort in Wales! Apparently, it has to be in London to get the lawyers to attend.

I don't know about you, but I would be reluctant to trust my legal affairs to someone who can't find their way down the M4. Another legal story quoted a report that legal education is "not fit for purpose". A bit of geography might not go amiss.

Chris Stokes