Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
Debate between Lord Beith and Heather Wheeler(13 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sir Alan Beith
Yes I do, and I was just coming to that as my final point. First, just let me complete my earlier point by saying that the absence of qualified one-way cost shifting leaves an imbalance in the implementation of the Jackson proposals. It is not even clear from the Bill precisely what the Government are doing.
Finally, let me address what I, too, have described as the scandal of referral fees under which insurance companies and some other bodies, such as trade unions, make money from selling the details and claims of the victims of accidents. It will not be enough merely to ban referral fees, because the Government and the industry must deal with a system of fees that has a fundamental fault. If there is a system of fees in which a lawyer can still make a profit from a relatively small claim having paid hundreds of pounds for the privilege of pursuing that claim, then we have to address the fixed costs as well as the referral fees.
