Update on timetable for Legal Aid, Sentencing & Punishment of Offenders Bill
Lord Wallace, the Advocate General for Scotland, has confirmed that, subject to Parliamentary approval, the implementation of the Jackson reforms will be postponed until April 2013. They were originally due to come into effect in October this year.
In a statement in the House of Lords on the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill this week, Lord Wallace said: “These proposals will require the making of new regulations and changes to the Civil Procedure Rules.
“We wish to make sure that we get the details of these regulations and rules right, and that will inevitably take some time. We are also conscious that stakeholders will need appropriate notice of when the changes will be implemented and how the details will affect them.”
The Jackson reforms would impose a 25% cap on uplift fees, add an extra 10% onto damages, and put an end to lawyers being able to recover success fees and after-the-event premiums from losing defendants.
The legal aid provisions of the Bill have already been postponed to April 2013.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We are committed to reforming the ‘no-win, no-fee’ system so that legal costs for reasonable compensation claims will be more proportionate, and avoidable claims will be deterred from going to court.
“This will help us to move away from the current unacceptable situation where, for example, the NHS paid £200m to claimants’ lawyers for compensation cases in 2010-11—around three times more than it paid its own lawyers.
“This will require changes to legal rules and regulations and we want to give sufficient time to get the complex details right. We are also conscious that legal businesses will need sufficient time to plan for the changes, alongside other forthcoming regulatory and funding changes to the industry.”
The delay has been welcomed by legal commentators. NLJ columnist, Professor Dominic Regan of City Law School, says: "The postponement is welcome. It is essential, given the enormity of the reforms, that measures are thoroughly prepared. The current Part 36 mess is due to implementation with undue haste in 2007."
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