EDITORIAL: Compensation culture hems in young people

Other People's Children, the recently published report from think-tank Demos, analyses a long list of factors that have combined to hem in the lives of children and young people, limiting their opportunities for personal development, to do things independently and simply to socialise.

The report (reviewed on p17) points to a decline in neighbourliness and trust, and a desire to protect children and young people, whether from traffic accidents or people who might harm them, that has progressively reduced their freedom of movement within their own communities. And while the Government has included measures in the antisocial behaviour bill to deal with the "problem" of teenagers hanging around on the street, it has done little to reverse the decline in affordable places where teenagers can simply go to hang out and socialise. One cannot help concluding that young people now lead lives less rich than their parents or even their older siblings.

One of the factors that the Demos report does not explicitly mention, but which is covered in our feature on p14, is the role of the insurance and legal industries. The simple fear of being sued, and the cost of insurance to cover against it, is constraining the lives of young people as much as any other factor. Insurance hikes of 300 per cent and more in the past year are making outdoor and group activities prohibitively expensive.

It is of course right that compensation should be paid if a young person dies or is injured as a result of negligence. But how is one meant to view cases such as the one in which the Scouts are being sued by a mother who claims her child suffered post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of being homesick at camp?

The Government has set up a working group under the auspices of the Home Office's Active Community Unit to look at the problem.

As well as talking to the insurance industry and the groups affected, it is an opportunity to look at what the Government itself might be able to do to help, perhaps through facilitating a central fund of some kind. It should also try to recommend ways to strengthen the hand of organisations in resisting trivial or misplaced claims rather than simply paying out in order to avoid going to court.

And it should look for ways to counter a culture that refuses to believe there is such a thing as a genuine accident, that there must always be someone to blame (and sue).