St George’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has paid out nearly £70 million of tax payers’ money for medical blunders in the past five years.

Analysis from the BBC Local News Partnership has found the Trust has come 16 out of 258 in the UK for the amount it has paid out in damages and legal costs the since 2012.

A total of £67,284,651 was paid out by St George's Hospital NHS Foundation Trust between 2012 and 2017.

Its bill over the past five years for mistakes made before 1995 amount to £3,097,245 - nearly all of it relating to maternity incidents - although nothing has been paid for these historical claims in the past three years.

The bill for all types of negligence claims in England has risen four-fold in 10 years to £1.6 billion in 2016 to 17.

An inquiry by the Public Accounts Committee in November last year warned that pressures on the NHS could see the litigation bill “spiralling out of control without effective action”.

In the past five years, the Department of Health has paid out £152 million, including legal fees, to victims of mistakes made before April 1995 in England.

Hospital failings during childbirth account for more than two-thirds of this cost.

Currently, on average, maternity incidents make up only 10 per cent of claims but 50 per cent of the cost of payouts.

The costs are so large because mistakes during or shortly after childbirth can leave the infant with brain damage and lifelong dependency on care, for which NHS trusts become liable.

Money is still being paid out for decades-old incidents because it can take years before patients or families realise they may have a claim for compensation and, sometimes, assessments about a child’s life-long care needs can only be made when they are older.

A spokeswoman for St George’s Hospital Trust said: “Like all NHS Trusts, our priority is to provide a high standard of care to all our patients.

“Unfortunately, on rare occasions, the standard of care we provide falls short of the high standards we expect.

“In cases such as this, and where harm occurs, we investigate each incident fully to reduce the chances of errors being repeated.

“The outcome of these investigations – and any recommendations for improvements – are shared with the relatives of the families in question.

“We also work closely with NHS Resolution, formerly the NHS Litigation Authority.”

The Department of Health (DoH) and NHS Resolution have put forward measures to the combat the situation, including a plan to cap the fees that legal firms can recoup from the tax payer when they win low value cases and trying to resolve negligence cases before they go to court.

With regard to maternity incidents, a proposal to introduce a voluntary alternative compensation scheme for infants who have suffered avoidable brain injury at birth has been put forward, along with cash incentives for trusts which take steps to make maternity services safer.

A spokesman for the DoH said: “We’re ensuring taxpayers’ money is spent effectively by taking action against law firms creaming off excessive legal costs that dwarf the damages recovered – but we’re also clear we want to ensure patients continue to access justice at a reasonable cost.”