Whether or not it originated in America or just sprang up naturally here, the litigation culture is one of the least attractive aspects of modern Britain. True, there are plenty of examples of people who suffered at the hands of inept doctors or other professionals and deserve compensation. Similarly, there are many cases where individuals have been victims of corporate wrongdoing.

For every deserving case, however, there are many that are much less deserving but are pushed by unscrupulous lawyers. Even in deserving cases, too often the lion’s share of a payout is going not to the victims themselves but to their “no-win, no-fee” lawyers.

A Sunday Times investigation has found that lawyers are charging more than £800 an hour pursuing legal claims against the National Health Service, raking in more than £100m a year of taxpayers’ money as a result.

One patient of the Barking, Havering & Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust received £7,000 in compensation while her legal firm claimed nearly £78,000 in costs and fees. A Liverpool firm put in a legal bill for £4.4m, although that was later cut back to £430,000.

The NHS Litigation Authority, which in a submission to Lord Justice Jackson, the leading judge, describes the costs lawyers are levying as “indefensibly expensive in relation to the compensation awarded or agreed”, is pressing for change. But it warns that there appears to be a lack of motivation for reform.

Some would argue that lawyers deserve fat fees for taking on cases on a no-win, no-fee basis. They, after all, are out of pocket when the judgment goes against their client. The evidence, though, is that lawyers carefully sift potential cases and cherry-pick the most promising. Their risk is minimal.

The litigation culture is becoming big business. Lawyers enjoyed a fees bonanza as a result of a £7.5 billion government scheme to compensate former miners for respiratory and other diseases. One, James Beresford, became Britain’s highest-paid solicitor as a result.

Several firms earned fees running into tens of millions of pounds. Many overstepped the mark and received penalties, including in some cases suspensions, from the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. The scandal of the miners’ compensation scheme is an object lesson of what can go wrong when large amounts of public money are up for grabs.

That, sadly, is also true of the NHS. The backlog of legal cases could result in no less than £12 billion of payouts, of which roughly half will go to lawyers. That is our money. The NHS Litigation Authority is right. We need to reform this process and end the party for lawyers. And we need to do it fast.