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There is no chance of claimant's then defendants lawyers joining hands to fight this. The lead article says that the defendants are not interested in joining with claimant's lawyers such as myself.

It is a feature of the adversarial process, as well as human nature, for people who have been in legal combat with each other year upon year to fail to see the wood from the trees when they have a common interest, as here.

How many defendants lawyers were laughing up their sleeve when Wacko Jacko No 1 was published.

It seems strange indeed, however, that defendant solicitors as a body have not seen the threat to them, and were too busy laughing at our discomfiture to realise the full potential of these odious ill thought out reforms.

What is happening is not just an attack on access to justice, however, though that would be bad enough.

What is happening is far more insidious. It is an attack on the very concept of justice itself. What constitutes and what does not constitute justice.

Justice now does not consist in the right to bring a claim in front of an unbiased tribunal.

Justice is presented by the government as the right of people not to be sued. My father and grandfather was servicemen as is the case with many people of my age. The vast majority of servicemen and women defend our democracy bravely and with an evenhandedness that is the envy of the world.

But a very few torture innocent people. The government seeks to defend those rogue servicemen. From alleged fatcat lawyers. Why are we always fatcat? I'm not fat, and I don't own a cat. Ridiculous name-calling.


And I won't be able to sue the NHS either. If the government has its way. I've just settled a case where someone suffered not a merely negligent operation but butchery. Is someone like him to lose his right to pursue a claim simply because the government wants to save money.


The concept of justice subject to an Orwellian reversal is itself being butchered because it's cheaper for the cynics in government.


These are very dangerous times in which we live. If a concept as basic as "justice"gets this kind of treatment, then I am no longer clear exactly what kind of country I'm living in.



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Well reform is happening. And it is destroying not just access to justice, but justice itself. The very concept is under attack in a kind of Orwellian maelstrom of disinformation.

The rights are being removed from the vast mass of ordinary people, because a handful are dishonest is absolutely incredible.

I would never have believed that this country would stoop so low.