The Autofocus story is remarkable – and salutary. For the
best part of a decade the motoring consultancy was riding high, retained by
insurance companies to challenge the cost of replacement hire cars for accident
and crash victims. Then, in 2010, the Autofocus bubble burst. The business
collapsed, going into administration in the wake of serious claims about serial
wrongdoing.
It was alleged that reports produced by Autofocus were
skewed in favour of insurers. The company’s ‘rate surveyors’, whose task it was
to compare hire rates to assess whether a specific charge was fair and
reasonable, are said to have routinely fabricated and manipulated their
reports.
The reports were used successfully in more than 4,000
contested court cases, and also formed the basis for thousands of out-of-court
settlements. But now, less than two years after the demise as a going concern
of Autofocus, the Attorney-General has reportedly referred the matter to the
Crown Prosecution Service. According to a piece in The Times this week, it is
now expected that the City of London Police’s fraud unit will be notified of
the case – and that fraud charges may well ensue.
A case of contempt?
That’s not all. It transpires that the Attorney General’s
office is also considering charges of contempt of court against seven former
Autofocus staff. No wonder, then, that Lord Justice Moses announced that he was
“flabbergasted” by the allegations, which, if proven, he said represented
“industrial-scale perjury” and a “serious conspiracy”.
His Lordship is absolutely right. There are indications
that the alleged corruption at Autofocus may have been on an industrial scale
and that it involved numerous industry players from nearly every facet of the
motor accident system. If true, the case would be indicative of the widespread
and systemic moral decay which has been facilitated by the departure from the
professional principles articulated by Lord Benson and a perpetual drive
towards profit to the detriment of everyone else – including consumers and
those involved in accidents.
What, though, can be done? How do we right the wrongs
that proliferate in the motor accident system?
LASPO doesn’t go far enough
A glance at the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of
Offenders Bill (LASPO), which is currently wending its way to legislative
approval, reveals that it offers little in the way of regulation or control of
ancillary services in the personal injury sector. Autofocus, of course, was an
example of one such ancillary service, and a great many of them have sprung up.
The worrying fact is, therefore, that Autofocus represents the tip of the
iceberg in relation to unethical and even illegal practices, precisely because
it, like all the others, is unregulated. A robust but fair and appropriate
regulatory authority which adopts a practical approach, backed by legislation
designed to close the various loopholes which are exploited by these companies,
is needed to improve the current system. LASPO needs to be rethought with this
in mind.
Another example of systemic failure is the unregulated
insurer practice of ‘third party capture’ which seeks to settle claims directly
with motor accident victims without any mandatory protection for the motorist
around their access to independent legal advice. This is another example of the
dysfunction in the motor accident system. There is strong circumstantial
evidence that this has led to claims being made which would never have been
brought had the insurers not made an unsolicited offer.
To return to Autofocus, we should recall that among the
insurance companies relying upon its reports are household names. There is no
suggestion that they colluded with Autofocus, and we should recall that
Autofocus has yet to put its side of the story. But nevertheless, whatever the
truth of the Autofocus allegations, the clamour for holistic change rather than
a piecemeal approach to the ills of the motor accident system is deafening. We
ignore it at our peril.
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