Jackson LJ questions MoJ's alternative funding scheme

A scheme, backed by the Ministry of Justice, to raise money for legal aid by deducting 25 per cent from the damages of successful publicly funded claimants has been questioned by Lord Justice Jackson.

Jackson LJ welcomed an announcement by the MoJ in June this year that it would introduce a supplementary legal aid scheme or SLAS.

Under the scheme the deduction would apply to ordinary cases and those funded under the exceptional funding mechanism, but would not apply to damages for future care and loss.

In a speech this weekend to the Professional Negligence Bar Association, Lord Justice Jackson said the SLAS would take a fixed deduction, even if the case settled immediately.

He said that under the SLAS, which operated in Hong Kong, a deduction of only six per cent was taken if the case settled before delivery of the brief for trial and ten per cent if the case continued.

'I express the hope that once the MoJ's proposed SLAS had been established it may prove practicable to operate on the basis of a lower deduction, at least in respect of cases which settle early,' Jackson LJ said.

'Also, of course, such a sliding scale provides an additional incentive to accept any reasonable settlement offer.'

Jackson LJ said he understood that Bob Young of Frontier Economics, who is researching into the viability of a contigency legal aid fund (CLAF) for the Bar, believed that small schemes could be viable in areas outside personal injury and clinical negligence.

Steve Hynes, director of the Legal Action Group, said the SLAS scheme was not in the legal aid bill and 'one might question how committed the government is to it'.

He said that, in theory, such a scheme could be used to fund multi-party actions, but the government's focus at the moment was on referral fees.