In response to the National Audit Office (NAO) report on the costs of clinical negligence, Thomas Reynolds, Director of Policy and Communications at the Medical Defence Union, said:

"This report needs to be a wake-up call. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is on the brink of delivering one of the most anticipated budgets in years - and this report from the National Audit Office shines a spotlight on the huge burden borne by the British taxpayer because of an outdated clinical negligence system.

"This should be a lightning-rod for change. The MDU has campaigned on this for decades. Now, more than ever, is time for the government to act.

"We welcome this report by the NAO and were pleased to be a key contributor to this work, as set out in the report. We have long argued that clinical negligence costs in the UK are unsustainable and diverting millions of pounds from frontline NHS services and patient care.

"The NAO's findings are stark, but sadly they come as no surprise. From a ratio approaching 4:1 in relation to legal costs versus compensation in claims of £25,000 or less, to the NHS almost certainly 'double-paying' on a vast scale because of an outdated law that requires courts to disregard the existence of a national health service when determining compensation.

"Or the fact that by the end of this parliament, the government estimates that £4.1 billion will be needed for annual payments of compensation and legal costs. This simply cannot go on.

"The MDU is calling on the government to introduce the long promised fixed recoverable costs scheme for claims valued at less than £25,000, to begin to arrest these spiralling costs. However, as the NAO report lays bare, both the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care need to be even more ambitious, and the MDU urges the government to introduce such a scheme for the upper limit of £250,000.

"If the Chancellor is looking for a 'rabbit out of the hat' moment to end rising clinical negligence costs, the government should end the decades-long absurdity that is Section 2(4) of the Law Reform (Personal Injuries) Act 1948, which requires courts to disregard the existence of the NHS when paying clinical negligence compensation, and instead do so on the basis of the cost of private healthcare.

"Change is there for the taking. We hope the government seizes it."

The Medical Defence Union responds to NAO report on clinical negligence costs