Regulations which will impose a 35% cap on contingency fees in employment cases were approved by the House of Commons and came into force this week.

Solicitors lambasted the new rules as a ‘dog’s dinner’ which threatens access to justice.

The regulations will also impose greater fee transparency and prevent clients from withdrawing from conditional fee agreements (CFA) once a settlement offer has been made. The government said the rules were based on research by Cardiff University law school Professor Richard Moorhead.

Employment Lawyers Association spokesman Stephen Levinson said the government had ignored Moorhead’s advice that capping contingency fees could impede access to justice. He said such fees ‘provide better value for money than hourly rates, particularly where a case is complex and time-consuming, and where a successful outcome is not assured’.

He added: ‘The new regulations are a dog’s dinner based on the premise that employment tribunals are non-contentious, which is barking mad.’

Dean Morris of West Midlands firm Morris Legal said: ‘This is a sneaky move to stop lawyers taking on cases with limited quantum or of questionable merit. Such cases will now go unrepresented because, financially, they are too risky.’

New rules about disclosure to clients, Morris added, applied to claims managers, but were already covered by the Solicitors Code of Conduct.

Kerry Underwood, senior partner at Hertfordshire firm Underwoods, said the new rules will stop clients pulling out of a CFA once the offer has been made. He said: ‘They can no longer look at the size of the award and work out it’s cheaper to pay the hourly rate after all, rather than give the lawyer his share. The lawyer has taken all the risk up to that point, and yet the fee doesn’t reflect the value of the award.’

Law Society president Robert Heslett has written to shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve calling on him to repeal the regulations if elected to government.

He said: ‘This is a cavalier move by the government which is not only damaging to the citizen, but also wrong in principle.

‘It is outrageous that the government should seek to twist [Professor Moorhead’s] research in order to use it as a basis for these regulations.’