Jackson Review proposals will “do harm” says Law Society
The Council of the Law Society has come out against Lord Justice Jackson's proposals on changes to civil costs because of the “damage they will do to ordinary peoples' ability to exercise their legal rights”.
In its response to the Government’s Green Paper on Legal Aid, the Council of the Law Society argued that savings could be made in the justice system without “wrecking access” and that the proposals put forward by Lord Justice Jackson – which include the ending the recoverability of success fees from losing parties - will “do harm”.
The President of the Law Society, Linda Lee, said: “These proposals will prevent ordinary people seeking redress from big business, insurance companies and government bodies when they have suffered harm at their hands.
“The current system of conditional fees has enabled the squeezed middle to access the courts. These reforms will turn back the clock and the courts will once again be the preserve of the rich. The conditional fee system guards against frivolous litigation, with solicitors acting as gatekeepers for meritorious cases. The Law Society believes that people should be compensated in full to the level of damage that they have suffered due to the negligence or wrongdoing of others.
“We share Lord Justice Jackson’s views about the costs of the system and we are not opposed to fixed costs in appropriate cases at appropriate levels, but the main drivers of costs are the court processes which can and should be streamlined wherever possible.”
The government has expressed its support for most of the recommendations made by Lord Justice Jackson in his review of the civil costs, published in January last year, in which he proposed that the recoverability of after-the-event insurance and success fees should be abolished. Success fees of up to 25% would then be taken from the damages paid, with a rise in the size of general damages awards increased by 10% to offset the effect on successful claimants.
However, critics of the reforms have said that the effect would be to reduce both the number of solicitors willing to take on many claims and to reduce the compensation rightly owed to meritorious claimants.
The Law Society instead outlined a list of other savings which it said could achieve a more efficient justice system without harming access to justice. These include:
- Making the financial sector pay for its own fraud cases - £74 million
- Introducing a Single fee for Crown Court work - £30 million
- Removing hearsay and bad character provisions - £6 million
- More efficient prosecutions; reimbursement of legal aid fund where poor prosecution decision-making results in prosecutions that are dropped /
- Limiting any individual’s income from legal aid - £16 million
- Greater use of wasted costs orders - £9 million
- Tighter application of the merits test for family cases- £29 million
- Funding legal costs from seized assets of defendants - £9 million; and
- Reviewing the approach to prosecutions in VHCCs - £14 million
Linda Lee said: “Simply cutting legal aid as the government plans will increase overall costs to the state as downstream costs arise when legal problems affecting ordinary people are unresolved. We believe savings could instead be made across the justice system that would not harm legal aid and access to justice.
'Making the wider justice system work as it is intended through better decision-making process, more efficient prosecutions and greater use of the Courts' existing powers, the use of funds seized from convicted criminals, and limiting any individual's income from legal aid to a similar level to what a top surgeon can earn from public funds offers much better ways to save money without doing harm."
