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The House of Commons Defence Committee has reported that:

“The Secretary of State [for Defence] told us that, as a result [of the MOD’s concerns about claims brought by clients of Public Interest Lawyers and Leigh Day], it compiled a “dossier” on the work of these law firms which it passed on to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.”

“On 31 August 2016, Public Interest Lawyers ceased trading. The Secretary of State asserted that the firm would not have been ‘dismantled’ in the way that it was without the intervention of the MOD.”

The Secretary of State’s exact evidence to the Committee is a matter of public record :

“Let us be very clear: Public Interest Lawyers would not have been dismantled in the way they have if we had not compiled a dossier of some of these abuses and sent it to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. We did that - that was us at the Ministry of Defence. We started this process of dealing with the abuses and we have now successfully dealt with Public Interest Lawyers.”

“…We are coming forward with a whole package of reforms looking at recovery of legal costs, streamlining the Solicitors Regulation Authority, putting a time limit on cases - we are working with the Ministry of Justice on a whole series of reforms to ensure that we do not get into this particular process again.”

The Chair of the Committee made the following comment:
“I was with the SRA yesterday talking about Phil Shiner’s case. Leigh Day are going through as well, as you well know. They have admitted a lack of integrity in all this [sic - no such admission was made by Leigh Day].