Angry legal aid solicitors have this week lashed out at plans to rein in civil legal aid through extended use of conditional fee agreements (CFAs) - with insurance experts also predicting that players in their market will not help clients who fall out of the public funding loop.

Launching a consultation last week, the Department for Constitutional Affairs and the Legal Services Commission said they wanted to keep cases out of the courts and save on costs by giving more incentives to settle without litigation.


It suggested that one way was moving several areas of law into the CFA sphere: housing disrepair, actions against the police, judicial reviews where permission had been granted, clinical negligence and proceedings relating to damages in education claims. It also suggested that if claimants lose non-family cases, they should be liable for the first £200 payable. The paper added: 'We intend to refuse legal aid for cases within the general funding code whenever they are suitable for a CFA, whether or not insurance is in practice available.'


But Legal Aid Practitioners Group director Richard Miller argued that the CFA regime was still unstable owing to satellite litigation and uncertainty over success fees. 'It is questionable whether CFAs are providing proper access to justice even within the personal injury field,' he said. 'Now is not the time to enforce expansion of their use in more problematic areas.'


Emmanuel Gilbert, director of on-line legal insurance broker www.thejudge.co.uk, said after-the-event providers were unlikely to embrace most of the areas mooted.


Other proposals in the consultation included greater use of alternative dispute resolution. Where there is an existing complaints or ombudsman scheme, clients should have to go through those procedures first.


With family cases, eligibility decisions should take into account assets such as the marital home in divorce cases, and there should also be stricter limits on legal aid for ancillary relief proceedings in divorce. There should also be restrictions on solicitors' devolved powers with judicial review.


Law Society chief executive Janet Paraskeva said Chancery Lane had grave concerns about the proposals. She said: 'Middle England is unable to afford justice. Rather than addressing this crisis, these proposals will make it worse.'



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