Djanogly moves to curb lawyers' fixed fees

The government has started work on curbing the fees solicitors are paid for handling road accident personal injury cases, justice minister Jonathan Djanogly told Insurance Times.

The minister, speaking at the Conservative Party conference on Monday evening, said the the government was exploring the regulations surrounding the fees, which lawyers receive for processing claims through the road traffic accident portal.  

Djanogly, who was the subject of fresh flak this week over his family’s stakes in various insurance-related businesses, said: “The conversations have already started,”

He was speaking to IT after an ABI conference fringe event on tackling the compensation culture, where he said: “If you are going to get premiums down, you have to get fixed costs. It would be unacceptable if those fixed fees just ended up in the pockets of claimant lawyers.”

Under the current fee structure, solicitors receive £1200 in cases where liability has been admitted and settlement has been agreed within a statutory 20 day period. Critics of the existing fee structure say that it enables lawyers to pay referral fees for cases while still making a profit.

He also revealed at the fringe meeting that while the government’s proposed referral fee ban, announced last month, would initially apply to personal injury cases, he intended to extend it to all forms of liability.

In his main speech to the Tory conference, which was overshadowed by his subsequent criticisms of his cabinet colleague Theresa May, justice secretary Ken Clarke pledged to “scrap referral fees to end the culture of those ambulance-chasing claims advisors.”

Djanolgy hit back at the media criticisms of his and his childrens’ shares in various insurance-related businesses as “shoddy and lazy journalism”, adding that he had declared all of his interests properly and on the record.