Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his Department has made of the accessibility and cost of procedures for defendants to seek an early determination of the validity of an assignment of an insolvency claim.

The general principle in England and Wales is that the unsuccessful party will usually be ordered to pay a proportion of the successful party's legal costs (known as recoverable costs), in addition to their own legal expenses. As with any civil proceedings, there are costs involved with seeking an early determination of the validity of an assignment of an insolvency claim, including court fees, legal advice or representation and, where applicable, liability for the other party's costs.

The affordability and accessibility of civil litigation have been considered more broadly through Lord Justice Jackson's review of civil litigation costs, which led to a package of reforms designed to promote access to justice while ensuring that litigation costs remain proportionate to the issues at stake. These reforms included changes to costs management, proportionality and, more recently, the introduction and expansion of Fixed Recoverable Costs in certain categories of case.

More recently, the Civil Justice Council (CJC) completed a review of litigation funding and made a series of recommendations. On 17 December 2025, the Government announced plans to accept the CJC’s primary two recommendations and introduce legislation when Parliamentary time allows to: a) mitigate the impact of the PACCAR judgment with prospective effect, and b) introduce light-touch regulation of litigation funding agreements (LFAs). The Government is carefully considering the Council’s wider recommendations on litigation funding, including consideration of issues relating to the affordability of litigation, and will set out its plans in due course.

The Government is confident the CJC and Jackson Reviews have suitably reviewed litigation funding and civil costs. As such, we have not made our own formal assessment of the accessibility and cost of civil claims.

The regulatory framework for LFAs is still being finalised, but given litigation funding by its nature relates to the third-party funding of claim, it will not apply in cases where a party is funding the claim themselves.