The House of Commons Transport Committee issued a report earlier this month which blames a rise in uncontested whiplash claims for increasing car insurance premiums.

Launching the latest report, Louise Ellman, Transport Committee Chair said: "Many of these claims are for whiplash, an injury where diagnosis is often subjective and therefore very costly for insurers to challenge. The threshold for receiving compensation in whiplash cases should be raised and, if the number of such claims does not fall significantly, the Government should bring forward primary legislation to require objective evidence - both of a whiplash injury and of it having a significant effect on the claimant’s life - before compensation is paid."

Nick Starling, director of general insurance at the Association of British Insurers stated ''It is absolutely critical that Britain's whiplash epidemic is tackled once and for all and the committee's acknowledgement that the bar to receiving compensation for whiplash is too low is a step in the right direction."

Meanwhile lawyers have defended clients who make claims for whiplash saying that insurers should defend claims if they think that they are not justified, rather than passing the cost of them on to the public.

Rachel Rogers, Associate Solicitor at QualitySolicitors Wilson Browne, confirms “We have a great deal of experience at dealing with road traffic accident claims and therefore a percentage of these are whiplash related. However of all of the current personal injury claims that we are currently dealing with only 20% are claims for whiplash injuries and this certainly does not support the ABI assertion that our society is currently dealing with a “whiplash epidemic.”

Chief Executive of the Law Society, Desmond Hudson said “It needs to be remembered that for many accident victims whiplash can be a painful and debilitating injury. Claimants who seriously suffer from it are entitled to compensation and the Government should not make it more difficult to claim that compensation just because the insurance industry has failed to sort itself out.”

As weather forecasters predict a cold snap approaching motorists will be keeping a watchful eye on the debate to see who will pick up the tab if they are unfortunate enough to be injured in an accident on the roads and suffer a whiplash injury.