Jackson Proposals Delayed

Tuesday 31st January, 2012

The Government's intention to end the recoverability of success fees and ATE premiums on the 1st October 2012 have been delayed until at least April 2013 as confirmed by the Ministry of Justice on 30th January 2012.

This is hardly surprising as there is a growing realisation that Sir Rupert Jackson's proposals were at best, superficially attractive. His report was long on justification but desperately short of details as to how his initiatives are to work in the real world and leave access to justice intact.

As we reported in our last newsletter, there remains no obvious solution, for example, as to how Qualified One Way Costing (QOCS) is to work in reality without leaving the Claimant with the need for ATE insurance or what the means test will be to enable qualification for such an arrangement or indeed who and how such qualification will be administered.

Interestingly the Government spokesman referred to a commitment to "reform the no win, no fee system so that legal costs for reasonable compensation claims will be more proportionate and avoidable claims will be deterred form going to Court."

This is not the language of retaining a commitment to abolish the principle of recoverability altogether.

The spokesman also said that the Ministry wanted "sufficient time to get the complex details right" as well as allowing legal businesses sufficient time to plan for the changes.

This is less encouraging. We wonder what dreadful fisherman's tangle of regulation (which in itself is bound to promote a large amount of testing litigation) will be concocted to resolve a largely non existent problem.

We are waiting to see if the proposals the Ministry of Justice create for the cure of the so called compensation culture will be much worse than than the disease."

 

Michael Lent

• Return to Latest News