The imaginatively named Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill 2010-11 was laid before Parliament on 21 June 2011. Part 2 of the Bill deals with litigation funding and costs, including:
- Abolishing the Legal Services Commission (LSC) and abolishing the recoverability of conditional fee agreement (CFA) success fees from a losing party. Any success fee will be paid by the CFA-funded party, giving them a financial interest in controlling the costs being incurred on their behalf.
- Abolishing the recoverability of after the event insurance premiums.
- Enabling the use of contingency fees or damages-based agreements (DBAs) in most civil litigation. The Bill contemplates the Lord Chancellor prescribing the information a legal representative must give a claimant before they enter a DBA and the maximum amount that may be paid under the DBA from the claimant’s damages.
- In addition to the current sanctions under Part 36 of the Civil Procedure Rules, enabling the court to make rules permitting payment of additional amounts to successful claimants where the judgment in the claimant’s favour is at least as advantageous as an offer the claimant made to settle the claim.
- Section 100 includes a very interesting provision re employing prisoners and deductions from payments to prisoners. I will be writing more about this when I have a spare moment:
103 Employment in prisons: deductions etc from payments to prisoners (1) In section 47 of the Prison Act 1952 (power of Secretary of State to make rules for the regulation and management of prisons etc), in subsection (1) omit “employment,”. (2) After that subsection insert— “(1A) The Secretary of State may make rules about— (a) the employment of persons who are required to be detained in secure training centres or young offender institutions; (b) the making of payments to such persons in respect of work or other activities undertaken by them, or in respect of their unemployment.” (3) In that section, after subsection (5) insert— “(6) Rules made under this section may— (a) make different provision for different cases; (b) contain supplementary, incidental, transitional, transitory or saving provision.” (4) After that section insert— “47A Rules about employment in prisons etc (1) The Secretary of State may make rules about— (a) the employment of prisoners; (b) the making of payments to prisoners in respect of work or other activities undertaken by them, or in respect of their unemployment. (2) The Secretary of State may make rules about the making, by the governor of the prison in which a prisoner is detained or the Secretary of State, of reductions in payments to the prisoner in respect of— (a) work undertaken by the prisoner, (b) other activities undertaken by the prisoner, or (c) the prisoner’s unemployment, where those payments are made by or on behalf of the Secretary of State.
Here is a link to the LASPO Bill – http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2010-2012/0205/12205.i-v.html
Philip Henson, Partner and Head of Employment Law @bargatemurray. www.bargatemurray.com
