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"The change is set to recoup £120m a year to fund court services, with every pound collected retained by the courts."

Incorrect. The court service *ALREADY* has 100% costs recovery (i.e. the costs of running the courts are covered by court fees - something which in itself is morally wrong, but that is for another day).

This proposal is to enable the courts to make a *PROFIT* and the surplus will obviously not be retained by the courts, but will defray government expenditure.

Incidentally John Bower, we are not an "industry" but a profession. It is very much the idea that court fees are only relevant to PI Claims muppets and their factory outfits with moronic TV ads giving £2,000 up-front and their moaning about costs and referral fees (even though referral fees are banned) which allows this to go ahead.

If the scumbag spivs can afford to give a free ipad to every Jeremy Kyle watching Special Brew drinker who fancies putting in a fraudulent accident claim, then - according to the government - there's clearly too much money in the system which could be used to fund other things.

To put it another way, this is simply a Cowboy Del-Boy lawyer tax.

Of course the reality is that this will very much dissuade commercial debt claimants. Much of my firm's practice consists of just that, and even now there are small firms, e.g. the printer who is owed £20,000 for magazines they have printer, or the local sub-contract brickie owed £25,000, who can not afford the existing court fees. (An already obscene £550) If the bank has called your overdraft in, and your source of income is an unpaid debt, owed by a large company who couldn't care less about being sued (as they know they'll defend it and it will delay the claim by two years), where do you find the money from to recover the debt?

Under the new scheme, the claimant will be asked to pay £2,000 in court fees to recover a claim of £25,000 on the fast track!!! (including issue / hearing / listing fees). This is simply an utter nonsense. They are going to charge £255 just to issue an application for, say, a strike out! (NB not so long ago the cost of this was £45!!!!!)

I hope the judicial review succeeds, but suspect it will not. So far as the public are concerned, lawyers are now seen as little more than Timeshare salesmen, spivs just out to screw money wherever they can. So we have no sympathy.

Well done Spud-U-Like Law(tm) [free beans with every claim]