The Compensation Culture: An Invisible Hand Pulls Down Social Values

CARDIFF UNIVERSITY

Pre-Sessional Programme

Student Name: HAN JUE

Tutor: Andrew Watling

Class Name: 8B EAP48

The Compensation Culture: An Invisible Hand Pulls Down Social Values

Required Length: 1500-1600

Actual Length: 1581

Submission Date: 26/08/2015

The Compensation Culture: An Invisible Hand Pulls Down Social Values

Normally, claiming for compensation should be the victim’s undeniable right and a reasonable way to maintain their interest. But during the last decade, the emergence of unjustified, frivolous, or fraudulent compensation claimed by a number of people changed the original purpose of making claims. Some people have become more likely to impute their misfortune to others without thinking about the reason at first. Several years ago, a report by Young (2010) shows that a serious problem which plagues health and safety in our society is litigation-drive compensation culture. This report has been mentioned by Fennell (2010) in The Times and has attracted extensive attention. Also, the number of people that were influenced over compensation culture is increasing. According to the Financial Service Compensation Scheme report (2014), FSCS paid out £234m in compensation for consumers in 2013/2014 and the cost was increased to £327m (FSCS 2015) in 2014/2015. At the same time, even some law offices started to use slogans such as ‘No win, no fee’ to attract and encourage people to claim for compensation. It becomes obvious that more and more people start to consult law office to claim for compensations. As a consequence, the abusive uses of claiming for compensation may cause some serious negative effects on social values, media guidance and education of the next generations.

The prevalence of compensation culture may change the social values to some extent. Recently, The Telegraph (2014) reported that The Justice Secretary Chris Grayling criticized that people has become inclined to blame others because of compensation culture and The Guardian (2014) also quote his thoughts to set a free comment on questions “Has compensation culture made us too quick to blame others”, which majority people voted agree and left comment about how compensation culture changed them and the people they knew. Generally, the social value can be influenced by various factors, including government policies, education level, model leading figures, social welfare, etc. Continuously developing and evolving with civilization, Stable and positive