Nearly £8bn has been set aside over the next decade to deal with the rising cost of medical negligence cases, government figures show.
The £7.8bn pot will cover compensation claims and legal bills, which have rocketed from £1m a year to more than £500m annually since the mid 1990s.
Up to 7,000 claims are submitted to the NHS Litigation Authority each year. In 2004-05 compensation pay-outs for clinical negligence claims came to £502m.
The government is planning to take steps to try to cut back the rising costs by introducing an NHS Redress Bill.
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The legislation, promised in the Queen’s speech, is expected to make it easier to settle claims out-of-court and reduce legal costs in long-running cases.
The Department of Health said the figures were a “worst case” scenario.
