§ Lord Lester of Herne Hillasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether the current arrangements for contingency legal fees and no win, no fee are working satisfactorily in the interests of litigants and of the due administration of justice. [HL2564]
§ Lord FilkinThe main form of no win, no fee arrangement permitted in England and Wales is a conditional fee agreement (CFA) which was introduced in 1995 and reformed in 2000. CFAs are providing access to justice for thousands of people with meritorious claims, are helping to increase early settlement and providing defendants with a system in which they are more likely to recover their costs in successfully defended cases. There has been satellite litigation concerning CFAs and related legal costs issues which prompted the Government to undertake a review of the CFA arrangements. This review, which is near completion has found that the current legislative arrangements are unnecessarily complex, may be difficult for many consumers fully to understand and provided scope for technical challenges by defendants. We plan to address this by bringing forward by the summer proposals to simplify the secondary legislation. This should help to ensure that the simple concept of no win, no fee translates into simpler agreements that are easier to undertstand and work even better for the consumer, are more straightforward for legal representatives to use and are more resistant to technical challenge.