Member

The Government have further committed to provide a supplementary additional autonomy award of up to £15,000 to those subjected to unethical medical research, such as the haemophiliac children at Treloar school. It is not easy to see under this heading how an objective comparison can be made between the severity of person A’s loss of autonomy and that of person B or C. If severity is an issue to be assessed in this context, how can the harm caused by unethical research be categorised into different bandings? Again, will assessments of this nature not cause unwanted delay in quantifying final payments? More broadly, how will any refinement of severity bandings—justifiable as those refinements may be in their own terms—not act as an unintended brake on the final determination of someone’s compensation award?