The government will implement the bulk of the Jackson review’s measures to scale back the ‘no win, no fee’ agreements when it publishes its Justice Bill later this afternoon.

Insurance Times has learnt that the Justice Bill, which is due to be presented in the House of Commons today, contains measures to:

  • prevent lawyers from recovering from success fees
  • stop the recoverability of after the event insurance premiums, except those taken out for clinical negligence cases
  • introduce a new type of ‘no win, no fee’ agreement known as a damages based agreement
  • impose a cap on the after the event insurance premiums claimants can recover for expensive expert reports in clinical negligence cases
  • allow claimants to have a 10% top up on their damages payments if they settle before going to court in a bid to encourage non-adverserial

But the bill is understood to contain no measures to ban referral fees.

A written ministerial statement from justice secretary Ken Clarke, published earlier today, said that the bill will contain “improvements to the ‘no-win, no fee’ conditional fee regime.”

Clarke says: “The overall aim is a fundamental shift in the justice system towards greater effectiveness and efficiency – and a move away from the sorry situation in which the average citizen dreads recourse to the law.”

The bulk of the bill is concerned with reforms to criminal sentences and legal aid.

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