Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Amendment 139C, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, seeks to amend Clause 45 to require the Lord Chancellor to make regulations to allow the recovery of ATE insurance premiums taken out to cover the risk of paying one's own disbursements within the relevant pre-action protocol period. As I have already made clear, the Government's position on ATE insurance is that it should no longer be recoverable from the losing party. Amendment 139C goes against the Government's reform and we will strongly resist it. In the same vein, I cannot accept Amendments 136A to 136D, which would retain recoverability of success fees for judicial review, employers' liability claims, professional negligence and clinical negligence. I have touched on some of these issues before and I do not intend to detain noble Lords further by going into the details of each particular area or trying to assess which litigants should be classed as more deserving than others. As I have said, it would be invidious and unfair to set out exceptions for some claimants and not for others, and we do not intend to do so. I urge the noble Lord not to press the amendments.