Limping LASPO left lacking

Lawyers have been left in the dark by the “frightening” lack of detail on the Jackson reforms in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (LASPO), the new president of the Association of Personal injury Lawyers (APIL), Karl Tonks, has warned.

In a strongly worded speech at the APIL annual conference, Tonks said: “[LASPO] makes no mention of the increase of 10% in general damages.

“The Act will be silent on qualified one-way costs shifting (QOCS), and, as yet, there is no public timetable for decision-making around how it works. What will the relationship be between QOCS and Pt 36? When will clients be afforded the protection of QOCS?

“Will clients carry financial risk and need to insure against it, or will QOCS effectively remove the need for after-the-event (ATE) insurance, except for disbursement funding? ATE providers need information quickly to start to build new models in time for the April 2013 launch. Firms need to do their sums—to understand what clients will pay on success fees and whether competition may eradicate them in certain areas.”

Tonks renewed calls for a fund of last resort to be set up, which would fund compensation where insurers cannot be traced.

The government overturned the majority of the Lords’ 11 amendments to the LASPO Bill last week.

The Bill then returned to the Lords, where peers voted in favour of public funding for domestic-violence victims to pursue civil claims against their abusive partners, and for the lord chancellor to have a duty to ensure individuals have effective access to justice.

It returned to the House of Commons this week, where justice secretary Ken Clarke tabled an amendment to postpone the Jackson reforms for mesothelioma cases. This means ATE insurance and success fees will continue to be recoverable for these cases after April 2013. The Bill now awaits Royal Assent.

Writing in the NLJ, David Greene, NLJ consultant editor, says that the gaps within LASPO leave “much to tussle over”. He highlights the necessity of judicial guidance in this area but predicts that such guidance “is unlikely to be forthcoming for some considerable period”.