Reforming Civil Justice

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I think that is right. This will have a big impact on defamation cases where people threaten the publisher of something they do not like with enormous costs if they want to defend the action. This is having, to use the jargon phrase, “a chilling effect” not only on scientific and academic work, but on proper investigative journalism. When we put the draft Defamation Bill together with what we are proposing to do in the light of Rupert Jackson’s proposals, the way in which we are setting up no win, no fee generally and the announcements I have made about the jurisdiction of the courts, I think we will make a significant impact on lowering the costs of all this litigation to the advantage of plaintiffs who have a legitimate grievance and of defendants. We are going to stop the whole thing being a high roller’s gamble, which is what it is at the moment, as to whether the other side dare face the risks of the huge costs being piled up the moment a claim is brought.

[Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)]

Whilst welcoming anything that will reduce the unnecessary costs to lawyers and others, will the Justice Secretary give a reasonable guarantee to constituents like my own, who are generally among the poorest people in Britain, that they will still be able to find legal assistance? The obvious problem with the 25% rule is that it might drive people below the threshold at which lawyers would be prepared to take the cases on. Will anything in the proposals deter people from obtaining proper expert evidence when that is necessary for them to fight their claim?

[Mr Clarke]

I think that people will think twice, as it were. At the moment, they are lured into making a claim by an advertisement on the back of a bus or in some local office. There are many people with perfectly legitimate personal injuries claims and the method I would wish them to pursue is to go to a solicitor who will consider the reasonable prospects of success and take it on on a no win, no fee basis—on the sort of terms that were always envisaged when we introduced the system into this country in the 1990s. People will have to think more carefully; there will be fewer purely speculative actions; and there will be fewer actions brought in the hope that the size of the legal costs is so great that the other side might be bullied into making an offer of settlement, regardless of their chance of success. I hope, however, that legitimate claims will prosper under a no win, no fee system, which is much closer to the lower-cost systems that other jurisdictions operate.