Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Bach Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Bach]

123: Clause 43, page 30, line 12, at end insert—
“( ) The amendments made by subsections (2) and (4) do not apply in relation to proceedings that include a claim for damages for loss resulting from any breach of duty to exercise professional care or skill.”

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, in opening this group of amendments, I shall do my best to be as brief as I can. The Committee is obviously in very tolerant mood this afternoon, as was shown to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, who made an excellent speech in favour of his amendments in the first group. His speech was almost as impressive as the report of Lord Justice Jackson in its completeness and, I was going to say, in its size. Both pieces of work are very much to be commended.

Before I discuss Amendment 123, I shall also speak to Amendments 124, 126, 132, 153, 154 and 156 in the group. It is worth pointing out to the Committee that for shorthand purposes we talk about the Government, as it were, accepting Lord Justice Jackson’s report. They have accepted part of it and rejected other parts. It is important to remember that at all times. Lord Justice Jackson himself, as all people in his position do, when putting forward his report before the previous general election, made it clear that it was to be seen as a package or not at all. Of course, the Government have decided to pick and mix—maybe all Governments, to be fair, would have decided to pick and mix, but this Government have certainly done that. What we meet in Part 2 of the Bill is not pure Jackson; it is very much a part of Jackson that the Government like but not the part that they do not like. In particular, that relates to legal aid and to clinical negligence. Other matters in Part 2 are not just not pure Jackson; they are anti-Jackson.

I shall set the scene for Amendment 123. An elderly pensioner places her life savings of, say, £40,000 with an investment adviser. That adviser assures her that he will keep it ticking over so she has some moderate income but will not be exposed to risk. Instead, the adviser, who has not his client’s but his own interests at heart, places the money in a high-risk instrument for which he gets a hefty broker fee. This otherwise impecunious pensioner loses all her money in the first year. Today, if she sued that investment adviser for professional negligence and won her case, he would have to give her back the £40,000—her own £40,000—pay her lawyers’ costs and a success fee which can range up to, as we have heard, 100 per cent of basic costs if he denies liability for as long as possible, and the insurance premium that the pensioner takes out to cover herself should she lose the case.

Under the proposed legislation, should it go through unamended, things would change dramatically. The pensioner would get her money back but then her lawyer’s success fee and the cost of insuring against losing would be deducted from her original capital. In short, the £40,000 might become £20,000, or even less. Surely the Committee would agree that that is an inequitable outcome, and not one that many in Parliament or outside could welcome. It is simply a by-product of legislation that purports to deal with tens of thousands of road traffic personal injury cases—largely whiplash—that drive up the cost of motor insurance, rather than the few hundred professional negligence cases which is what this amendment is about, that are heard each year.

It is only common sense that we should not seek to legislate for a system of litigation that allows professional people to prey on their impecunious and weak clients. The Committee today is full of professional people of one sort or another and the House is even more full of them when it is sitting. As we all know, being in a profession is a privilege. When a professional takes on contractual fiduciary and moral duties to do their best to help their clients, they take on an important responsibility. We have professions in our society because we need experts who specialise, whether it is expertise in finance, in my example, the law, engineering or medicine. They should know that society takes seriously if and when they act negligently, with malice, or breach their duty of care. Should we make it so difficult for the individual to take action and claim back their damages in full? Would that not have a corrosive impact on trust in the professions and their regulation, which is something that professions and the professionals themselves should not and do not welcome. We think that the answer to this dilemma is to listen to what Lord Justice Jackson said and extend one-way costs shifting to all litigation, not just keep it to personal injury. That in one fell swoop would deal with the problem that the Government talk about with regard to losing defendants’ paying the insurance premiums of winning claimants, which we are told simply inflate costs without adding a huge amount of value.

Secondly, perhaps we could limit the non-recoverability of success fees to 80 per cent of the litigation market—the side of the market that has more nuisance and abuses— which is low-value road traffic cases and public liability personal injury cases. Should we fail to do this, and leave the Bill unamended, the perpetrators of the PPI mis-selling scandal—the mortgage mis-selling scandal of the 1980s and 1990s which noble Lords will remember—and thousands of other instances when rogue professionals have abused their position of trust, will go unpunished and unheard. Their victims will multiply in a system where those who have been wronged are dissuaded from taking action against rogues, knowing that Parliament will have legislated to substantially limit their rights to redress. It would be something of a rogues’ charter.

I end what I have to say about this amendment by citing the views of the president of the Professional Negligence Lawyers Association who said that many litigants face the dilemma of having had their trust betrayed by one professional adviser and that their only redress by way of litigation is to risk remaining assets and perhaps insolvency by trusting another—meaning another professional adviser—to win their case. That is not a satisfactory position and we ask the Government to think again.

The subject of Amendment 124 is privacy and defamation. Both matters are—as always, but particularly at the moment—the subject of intense discussion. We are still living through a scandal that was as devastating to the reputation of the media industry as the expenses scandal was to the political world. Every Member of this Committee believes in both the freedom and the viability of the press; clearly that is something that unites us. At the moment we have the potential of major reform of the law of defamation being pursued through Parliament. The Minister who will respond to this group of amendments has responsibilities in that area. I commend what he has done up to now and I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Lester, is in his place, because he is in many ways the author of the reform of defamation that I hope we will see before long.

We welcome discussion and reform, which are important. The balance is wrong between the freedom of the press and the rights of the individual to be free of tortious defamation; we should look at that. However, the impact on the law of the legislation that we are discussing will be too grave for us to stand by while it passes. The impact of Part 2 of the Bill will be to make defamation and privacy proceedings in the main completely inaccessible to the average citizen. It is not just the Official Opposition who see this problem. The Liberal Democrats tabled amendments on Report in another place to exempt these cases from the reforms. The Joint Committee on the Draft Defamation Bill stated:

“Nonetheless we are sufficiently concerned about”,

the Government's proposals,

“to ask the Government to reconsider the implementation of the Jackson Report in respect of defamation actions, with a view to protecting further the interests of those without substantial financial means”.

I come to the Dowler case. As the Committee will know, Bob and Sally Dowler lost their daughter Milly. They wrote to the Prime Minister, asking for the reforms that we are debating to be withdrawn. They wrote:

“What we wanted to make clear to you is that we could not have done this without a “no win no fee” agreement ... What helped was the fact that we would be insured if we lost a case and a premium for the insurance would be taken from the other side if we won. Without that we would not have been able to start a case or even threaten it … We are sure that you do not want to go down in history as the Prime Minister who took rights away from ordinary people so that large companies could print whatever they like and break the law without being able to challenge them”.

That is perhaps the best example I can give the Committee this afternoon. It shows what is at stake here.

Let us imagine that, in the wake of a scandal as extraordinary as the hacking scandal—the hacking of the phones of hundreds of innocent people—our response in Parliament was to make it more difficult, or even impossible, for the victims to take action and expose further scandals. Without the powers of the court to compel disclosure as part of litigation, we would not have seen the mountain of evidence that we now know exists. There would have been no information, no investigation and no justice.

Why are privacy and defamation cases so problematic in this legislation? It comes down to the fact that in general the courts here do not award huge damages to victims of defamation or invasion of privacy. Damages are very low—an average of some £4,000. According to research analysis by Mr David Howarth, a Cambridge law professor better known to us as the shadow Justice Secretary in the previous Parliament and MP for Cambridge, average costs are around £11,000. According to Lord Justice Jackson, insurance fees are around £65 for cover of £100, and I am afraid that defendants sometimes rack up costs in denying liability for as long as they can. So the costs of the claimant and defendant dwarf the damages that are sometimes involved.

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[Lord Bach]

I thank the Minister for his response, but he will not be surprised to hear me say that I found it deeply disappointing and unsatisfactory. I do not think that the arguments he has employed deal with the gravity of the issues raised in these amendments. I thank noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, with his expertise. In a moment I will respond to one or two things he said, which he will be able to see in Hansard because he is not in his place at the moment. I am particularly grateful for the contributions of my noble friend Lord Prescott and the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn. They made this debate come alive with their powerful and passionate speeches which dealt with real-life situations as opposed to the theory that we so often talk about when we are dealing with this kind of legislation. If nothing else, I hope very much that the Government will read carefully what those noble Lords said before deciding their next step.

On the law of defamation, perhaps I may make my position absolutely clear. I believe that it should be changed and I look forward to the reforms. I have spoken on them before. We shall see what the Bill looks like but I am in favour of the reforms. Of course we want to see the right balance between claimant and defendant in defamation cases, as I hope we do in every part of our law. But we are not talking about that. You can have the best system in the world, but if only very few people can actually use it, it is not much good. That is the real criticism here. The system will be changed, it is hoped for the better, with a better balance for those who manage to get proceedings off the ground, but if it is only the rich and the powerful who can sue for defamation, then as I say, it is not much use and goes against the British system which should allow all people to have access to justice. If we leave it to the Defamation Bill itself, this Bill will already have passed in its present form. Is it really believable that the Government will then suddenly say, “Oh, we were wrong in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill and so we will change it now that we have the Defamation Bill”? I do not think so. That is why these issues have to be raised in this Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Lester, was right to say that there are defendants in defamation cases who are not powerful, but I remind the Committee that defendants can and sometimes do use CFAs in cases of this kind. They, too—good, successful defendants—if they are not able to use CFAs because of the risks attached to the costs position, may find themselves not using them when they do already.

In theory, the Minister is absolutely right to say that the CFA system still exists and that people can still use CFAs, but in practice the question that arises from these amendments is this: will they, when they stand to lose their assets even if they win their case? That is the issue. We gently warn the Government now that it is no good looking at this four or five years down the line when it is discovered that the Government have been so inflexible in their approach to this part of the Bill that justice is denied to a large number of ordinary people because of the statute that will then be in place. The Minister said that there was coalition agreement about defamation reform. Indeed there was, but I remind him and the Committee that there was no coalition agreement at all about Part 2 of this Bill.

If the Minister accepts that damages are outstripped by costs, surely the Government must agree that success fees plus “after the event” insurance will dwarf the damages that are awarded; that is, victims will be left out of pocket. If they fear being left out of pocket, they are not going to sue, even if they have a good case. The original form of CFAs was also prayed in aid by the Minister. He should be reminded that the original form was only for PI and insolvency, certainly not for defamation cases. Here, of course, if the Government have their way, the changes will relate to defamation for privacy and professional negligence. If the Bill remains unamended, the effects will be very severe indeed.

We have had a good debate. I am grateful to the Minister for responding to it in the manner in which he has, even if his arguments are unconvincing. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 123 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Bach]

125: Clause 43, page 30, line 12, at end insert—
“( ) The amendments made by subsections (2) and (4) do not apply in relation to proceedings that include a claim for judicial review of a decision, or of a failure to decide, by a public body.”

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, judicial review proceedings offer a chance for the ordinary citizen to review decisions made by the state or by an emanation of the state, be it local government or powerful governmental bodies, if they have a justifiable interest in that decision. It is often the last chance for the law to review the decisions of lower courts and tribunals or state decisions that are not in themselves subject to appeals. The costs of bringing a judicial review claim are considerable, in the region of £10,000 to £20,000 for a straightforward case, and obviously higher for a more difficult one. If the claimant is unsuccessful, they are likely to be liable for the defendant’s costs as well as their own. They are therefore looking at legal bills of perhaps upwards of £30,000 if they lose and they must be prepared for this eventuality bearing in mind the unpredictability of judicial review proceedings by their very nature, and, of course, costs orders.

Conditional fee agreements are in theory available as a means of funding judicial review proceedings, although they are relatively rare. We are therefore not discussing the standard way of funding, but rather the minority of cases that are taken by CFA for judicial review. These are cases that are not being picked up by legal aid or other mechanisms of funding. In some instances, what is called a protective costs order may be the only way in which the claimant can bring the claim, or it may be necessary to consider applying for a protective costs order in combination with one of the options I have mentioned. However, protective costs orders are themselves available only in relatively limited circumstances based on the rules set out under the leading case of Corner House Research and subsequent decisions. We put this to the Minister in another place but felt that his answer was unsatisfactory. I ask the Committee also to find it so. I hope I may be forgiven for quoting him at length:

“Responses to our consultation indicated that CFAs are less commonly used outside the area of personal injury and are not frequently used in judicial review proceedings. In addition, ATE insurance is rare in judicial review In our view, therefore, the abolition of recoverability of CFA success fees would have relatively little impact on judicial review claims, and the key driver for the introduction of QOWCS to reduce the need for and costs of ATE insurance is not present. Although there is already some element of one-way cost shifting in judicial review cases where the claimant is legally aided—

the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, explained to us the rule about QOCS in legal aid—

“or obtains a protective costs order, the introduction of QOWCS for all judicial review cases would be a significant change that could distort the market and significantly affect public authorities, which could face large numbers of unmeritorious claims that would have to be defended, at least until the permission stage”.

He went on:

“Under our reforms, people will still be able to bring cases on CFAs in areas where they are currently used, as we are returning the CFA arrangements to their original form. In judicial review proceedings, which raise issues of general public importance, claimants can, in appropriate cases, apply for a protective costs order to limit the amount of the defendant’s costs that they may be required to pay if they lose, and legal aid is also being retained for the vast majority of judicial review cases currently funded. Legal aid recipients will continue to benefit from cost protection”.—[Official Report, Commons, Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill Committee, 13/09/11; col. 555.]

On qualified one-way costs-shifting, this is plainly in contravention of what Lord Justice Jackson’s position appears to be. His recommendations were these:

“Qualified one way costs shifting should be introduced for judicial review claims … If the defendant settles a judicial review claim after issue and the claimant has complied with the protocol, the normal order should be that the defendant do pay the claimant’s costs”.

He pointed out that protective costs orders and legal aid did not pick up all cases and many meritorious cases.

Lord Justice Jackson wrote in his report, citing Michael Fordham QC and Jessica Boyd:

“A public law costs regime should promote access to justice. It should be workable and straightforward. It should facilitate the operation of public law scrutiny on the executive, in the public interest. This is the key point. For judicial review is a constitutional protection, which operates in the public interest, to hold public authorities to the rule of law. It is well-established that judicial review principles ‘give effect to the rule of law’…The facilitation of judicial review is a constitutional imperative”.

With regard to the success fee, we believe that Lord Justice Jackson may not be right. He said in his report:

“If qualified one way costs shifting is introduced, in my view that will strike the right balance as between claimant and defendant in judicial review proceedings. There is no justification for imposing upon defendants the additional burden of paying, potentially huge, success fees. Significantly, a number of respondents from both sides of the fence have recognised this principle during Phase 2. The success fee payable, if any, must be a matter between the claimant and the claimant’s solicitor”.

How, then, will the impecunious settle the success fee and from which non-existent bank account? Furthermore, if public law practitioners cannot retrieve their success fee, what will be the impact on their decision to take on 90 per cent to 10 per cent cases, let alone 50 per cent to 50 per cent cases? It is in the interests of justice that those cases are sometimes taken on, but many may not be in future. How will the Government protect the constitutional imperative, if they agree that it is one, that administrative law should be allowed to be pursued by the ordinary citizen in cases of judicial review when legal aid is not available? I beg to move.

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[Lord McNally]

Yes, I would think that that was true. I understand that such cases are extremely rare. A success fee would not be the enticement to take the case.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. When I first accused the Government of not having accepted the Jackson package, I was very careful to say that whatever Government were in power would probably not have accepted every word of such a major report. However, it is interesting what this Government have accepted and what they have left out. In short, they have left out any defence of legal aid, whereas Lord Justice Jackson was very concerned that there should be no more cutting in civil legal aid. That is also very much the view around the Committee on Part 1 of the Bill as well as, in relation to Part 2, in the case of clinical negligence if nothing else. We think that the Government have picked the wrong bits of Jackson to support, and they have left the best bits out, which is rather careless of them.

Three senior costs judges, who deal with some of these issues daily, said in their submission on the Jackson report:

“we do not agree with the proposals set out in the Report ... The CFA regime has undergone many changes and improvements since implementation. Having taken a decade for these to have been achieved, now is not the time to made radical changes which give no guarantee that access to justice at reduced costs will be delivered under Jackson”—

they go on, perhaps rather unfairly, to say—

“where it failed under Woolf”.

That was their view. So there is a difference—a justifiable difference—of opinion, both in this Committee and outside this Committee among those who have to decide these cases.

The Government should be warned that they should not just stick so rigidly to their formula for changing without looking at individual areas of the law. Flexibility is important, as well as having rules. If the Government are just going to say no to every exception to Jackson, I fear that, certainly in some areas, the reforms that will then go through, if the Government get their way, will be disastrous for civil justice in this country because they will mean that so many people will not be able to get justice who are currently able to do so.

This is a probing amendment, but it also has some real feeling behind it. However, of course I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 125 withdrawn.

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[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

My Lords, I must move this amendment, since it is in the names of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, of myself and of the noble Lord, Lord Bach. It is an alliance of all three parties.

[Lord Bach]

It was made in heaven.

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[Lord Bach]

My Lords, we on this side very much support the amendment, in very much the same terms as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, has moved it. As he said, insolvency practitioners are appointed to help insolvent companies sue directors in order to recover money for creditors of the insolvent company. The companies are insolvent; they cannot pay for a lawyer—they have no assets. The practitioners’ job, which is sometimes a difficult one, is to recover as much money as possible. It is always in the public interest that they are able to do so, and I am sure that the Government would agree with that proposition. As both practitioners and regulators have warned, alongside HMRC and the Insolvency Service, these sorts of actions will be severely compromised in future. As the noble Lord has just told the Committee, HMRC is a major creditor, if not the major creditor, to many insolvent companies, so the public purse will itself be hit to the tune of £200 million. I remind the Minister that that is more than half of the total legal aid cuts and enough to pay for social welfare law at least twice over.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants for England and Wales, a very respected body, said:

“we are deeply concerned that the legislation in its current form could have a harmful impact on the insolvency process. Unless claims brought by insolvency practitioners are exempted, this legislation would prevent potential recovery from incompetent or fraudulent directors or bankrupts, which will result in greater losses being borne by innocent creditors when a business is made insolvent … Those creditors are usually small businesses or HMRC, who would lose potential tax receipts, a cost ultimately to the taxpayer. Furthermore, fraudulent directors and bankrupt sole traders would keep the gains they made from irresponsible management of their business”.

That is why Revenue and Customs and the Insolvency Service have lobbied the Ministry of Justice for an exemption, but to no avail.

Let me take noble Lords to the Guardian newspaper on 6 June last year, when it reported:

“A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said: ‘We are considering the impact of abolishing CFA [conditional fee arrangements] recoverability in insolvency and related proceedings. These proceedings can bring substantial returns to creditors, including Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs. We are therefore discussing the specific implications with a view to reaching a satisfactory conclusion.’ … A spokesman for Revenue & Customs said: ‘HMRC is in discussion with the Ministry of Justice about the implications of the Jackson Report but is unable at present to comment further on this matter’”.

The Minister can comment further on this matter in a few minutes’ time. What was the outcome of the negotiations between the Ministry and HMRC? We have heard why these cases need protection, but nothing on how this will be achieved. If the Minister is to support what is contained in the Bill, he should tell the Committee how he intends to protect against the arguments used by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, and myself in moving and speaking to the amendment. This is a good—if not the best—example of how wrongdoers will benefit at the expense of victims. In this case, it is even more serious, because the victims are us, potentially—the taxpayers and people of this country. That is why this particular amendment supports the proposition that a one-size-fits-all package is not right for the civil justice system and that a degree of flexibility needs to be built in. If the Government maintain their position on insolvency, the wrongdoers will gain and the creditors will lose. I look forward very much to hearing how the Minister defends this particular proposition.

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I feel as any Minister would, who sees an amendment signed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and noble Lords, Lord Thomas and Lord Bach—the names sound like one of those formidable halfback lines from a 1950s soccer team. I know that it would be the wrong game for the noble Lord, Lord Thomas.

The amendments refer to both success fees and ATE insurance in insolvency. Just for information, Lord Justice Jackson recommended the abolition of recoverability of success fees and ATE insurance premiums in insolvency proceedings. However, we have already established that we do not simply use Lord Jackson as a defence in all matters. As the Government indicated in the other place, we are aware of the specific concerns around the impact of the CFA changes in insolvency cases. The use of CFAs in these cases, under the Insolvency Act 1986, can bring substantial revenue to creditors, including Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

I cannot go a great deal further. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, has now introduced a new system whereby he makes my speech and his own speech and leaves not a lot for me to say. I am nevertheless grateful that on the record we had speeches from the noble Lord and from the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, setting out the problem in probing amendments, as they have acknowledged. As the noble Lord, Lord Bach, revealed in his speech, there are ongoing discussions between HMRC and MoJ, and the Government are considering the position in respect of insolvency proceedings. Until we have come to a conclusion—

[Lord Bach]

The quotation I read from the Guardian was from June 2011. We are now very near the end of January 2012 and the Bill is now in your Lordships’ House. When are these negotiations going to finish?

[Lord McNally]

They are ongoing. I admit that sounds like that song “Reviewing the Situation” from “Oliver!” but I have no doubt that the good relations between the MoJ and Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs will produce a satisfactory result, which I will report to the House at the earliest possible moment. In the mean time, I request the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.