There may well be a subculture of insurance scammers, fraudsters and criminals in the UK but from my recent experience there's quite a few of them operating within the insurance world.

Back in February an elderly couple in a small hatchback drove into the back of my Land Rover while we were stationary at traffic lights. The tow bar on the LR took the impact and our damage was minimal - broken rear light lens, dislodged piece of trim and slight bend in one bumper mounting bracket. Nobody was hurt in any way at all but the damage to the hatchback was severe so it had to go through their insurance company.

Since then I must have had thirty "ambulance chasing" legal companies ring me trying to convince me that we really were hurt and we ought to let them sue on our behalf. Some of them were persistant and persuasive and I suspect they would convince many people to "give it a go". Had I agreed I wonder about both the moral and legal aspects of this. To get a "result" someone at some point would have to have lied. It would have been dressed up in ambiguity, probability and uncertainty but at its core it would have been fraudulent.

I thought I'd fix the damage to the LR myself - the part were (via ebay) under £20 and about an hour's work, but no, the elderly couple's insurance company insisted they do it so I let them. A local body shop took the car away and a rental Toyota 4x4 turned up for us to use. Two weeks later it was all done - just under £3000 for the repairs + whatever the hire car cost. The bodyshop guy said they have to replace everything with even the slightest mark "just in case" otherwise people complain. The car rental people told me the insurance companies get a huge discount but only if they put a certain volume of rentals their way. The whole thing is like a juggernaut- once it gets rolling it's unstopable. Everybody wants their cut and what is fair and reasonable (to my eye anyway) seems to go out the window.

I think the only wholy honest person person I met in this saga was the elderly lady driver who admitted her foot had slipped off the brake pedal. Just about everyone else had some sort of angle they were pushing. Whether this is a "gravy train" or the only way to keep all of the necessary sub contractors viable may depend on your political persuasion but it's the premiums that are paying for it.