Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Jack Straw and Anna Soubry

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

I take that, as they say in court, as an admission. At long last, the Secretary of State now accepts that the reoffending rate of those released under IPPs is low. Perhaps he will now reassess his ludicrous claim that that policy is not working.

[Anna Soubry]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Straw]

I am afraid that I have had my ration of interventions.

Let me move on to the proposals for civil litigation reform. I established the Jackson review and fully endorsed its conclusions in January 2010. I welcome the fact that this Government are implementing it, but they are doing so only in part.

I want to pick up on the points made by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) and the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) about referral fees and associated matters. As colleagues will know, on Monday I published the results of an investigation into what I can only describe as a racket in the motor insurance industry in which almost everyone in the chain, from recovery firms, claims companies, medical experts to insurers themselves, is paying between £200 and £1,000 in referral fees. Everybody in this chain is on the take, and the total is running into billions.

Since Monday, I have been overwhelmed by e-mails, which I am very happy to supply to the Lord Chancellor if he wishes, from members of the public and professionals with even more horrifying detail about the dodgy practices, frauds and near-frauds that are now endemic in this industry, including one from a lady who explained that she “had had an argument with her bicycle”. She was the only person present at the time, she went to hospital and ever since she has been pestered to make a claim.