The House of Commons approved the 2025 whiplash regulations on 2 April 2025 in a debate that was notable for its brevity and for a lack of controversy over the proposals.

As is already known, the regulations will increase the statutory tariff for whiplash injuries with symptoms lasting less than two years by around 15% (i) to account for past inflation and (ii) to provide an inflationary “buffer” allowing for inflation over the period before the next triennial review.

Only the Justice Minister and the Labour and Liberal Democrat front bench leads spoke during an exchange of less than 20 minutes. Both opposition parties broadly welcomed the proposed increase to allow for the effects of inflation. The regulations were approved without a division and will now pass to the Lords for its consideration.

The Minister re-stated that the appropriate measure of inflation in this context is the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), which is lower than the Retail Prices Index (RPI), and he observed that “the alternative retail prices index measure, if applied, would likely overstate inflation.” It is worth noting in passing that the Judicial College Guidelines for General Damages use RPI to adjust common law damages for inflation, although the current, 17^th, edition recognises that resolving the debate over indices in that context must be a matter for the courts.

Additionally, also with regard to the judiciary, the Minister reported that before making the regulations, the Lord Chancellor had, as required by the Act, consulted the Lady Chief Justice. She had appointed the Master of the Rolls (MR) to respond on her behalf and he (the MR) endorsed the inflationary increase and added, possibly tellingly, that “the judiciary would not welcome any further derogation from the principle that damages are assessed and awarded by the courts.”

As we reported on 28 March, the Treasury has published its report examining the financial impact and benefit to policyholders of these reforms. The Minister did not refer to it during his opening speech and it seemed that neither spokesperson from the other main parties was aware of it. The consequence of this was that the figures reported by the Treasury were simply not aired before the House – frankly, a very surprising outcome.

Although the Minister referred to the report in his closing remarks, it seems as if he chose to give only a high-level summary, saying that - “[it] shows that the whiplash reforms have reduced insurance costs for customers” - rather than to ventilate the detailed figures reported by the Treasury. He did, however, end the debate by confirming that the Ministry will conduct a post-implementation review of the whiplash reforms later this year. That exercise, along with the debate on the regulations in the Lords in the coming weeks, may afford the sort of detailed consideration of the data that was surprisingly absent from this debate.