Barely a week after our last article on whiplash claims, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) published the draft regulations that will, once approved by Parliament, increase the statutory tariff for whiplash injuries by around 15%.

Given the clear intention set out in the review of the 2021 regulations, there are no surprises in the draft Whiplash Injury (Amendment) Regulations 2025 released yesterday by the MoJ and, as we expected, the change will take effect on the fourth anniversary of the reforms, 31 May 2025. The detail of the new tariff can be found at regulation 2 in the link above.

The explanatory memorandum accompanying the regulations notes that a further review will take place by 22 May 2027, that being three years after the conclusion of the previous review referred to above. Although that is for the future, the memorandum also points out that in the very short term “By 1 April 2025, the Treasury will lay before Parliament a report that gives a view on whether policyholders have benefited from any reductions in costs for insurers.”

As we pointed out in the previous article, the draft regulations must be debated and approved by both Houses. Although we don’t yet have the dates for these debates, it would seem highly likely that MPs and Peers will have seen the Treasury’s report before those take place.

We expect that the extent to which the Treasury’s findings stack up against the original (2018) impact assessment (IA) of the reforms will be closely scrutinised. The explanatory memorandum reiterates that the 2018 IA “determined that defendant insurers would save roughly £1.3bn (gross), of which £1.1bn would be passed onto consumers in the form of lower premiums. Reduced premiums would give an insurance premium tax benefit to motor premium holders of around £110m, giving a net benefit of around £1.2bn.”