Claimant lawyers’ legal fees under the Road Traffic Accident portal scheme will have to be renegotiated as a result of the forthcoming ban on referral fees, the Ministry of Justice confirmed to the Gazette today.

An MoJ spokesman said the fees, which were calculated including an allowance for referral fees paid by claimants to obtain work, would have to be revisited.

He said the MoJ hoped that claimant and defendant lawyers would be able to reach a deal through negotiations brokered by a third party, as they had when the fixed fees were originally agreed.

However, he said that if this did not work, the MoJ itself was prepared to 'facilitate’ an agreement.

The spokesman said that work had not yet begun in relation to the fixed fee rates, as the MoJ was still at the stage of defining what is meant by a referral fee.