Members of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said that a mixture of increasing efficiency targets, rising financial pressures, and patients waiting longer for treatment raised the risk of clinical negligence claims "spiralling out of control" without effective action. 1 In a report on managing the costs of clinical negligence in hospital trusts, the committee said that the annual cost of claims had quadrupled over the past decade, from £0.4bn (€0.45bn; $0.54bn) in 2006-07 to £1.6bn in 2016-17, diverting resources away from frontline services. After the publication of the committee's report Action against Medical Accidents (AvMA), the Law Society, and the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers jointly agreed terms of reference for a working party to reduce legal costs in clinical negligence cases below £25000. A government spokesperson said, "Clinical negligence costs are too high, so we are working on proposals to fix the amount that legal firms can recover from clinical negligence cases and provide families affected by severe avoidable birth injuries-a leading cause of clinical negligence costs-with an alternative to lengthy court disputes."