Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate and the Minister for his very detailed and thoughtful reply. I am only sorry that, although we started from the same place, we have not reached the same conclusions. There has been much reference in this debate to costs running into millions of pounds. However, the Rome II regulations provide for damages paid to successful victims to be calculated according to the costs in the country where the abuse took place, whereas legal costs are calculated according to what they are in the UK. Therefore, vast disparities are bound to occur. It was the UK Government who signed up to this, not the South African miners or the Peruvian campesinos. We need to take responsibility for that and for the additional restraints proposed by the Bill. In a case with thousands of claimants, of course the costs will run into millions. If there are 1,000 claimants, there will be 1,000 medical reports and 1,000 toxicology reports to get. There will be travel and translation costs. Of course it will be expensive. The firm of solicitors to which the Minister referred, Leigh Day & Co, which has conducted most of these cases, routinely cross-subsidises its human rights work by taking on many other types of case. That enables it to take on those human rights cases. In the case of Trafigura, for example, in which each victim was awarded £1,000, it was not extraordinarily disproportionate for the company to have achieved £3,000 in costs, given the kind and amount of work and the length of time that such cases involve. The disparities and the inequalities are too great. Justice is justice, whatever the cost. I want to test the opinion of the House. Division on Amendment 21 Contents 176; Not-Contents 206. Amendment 21 disagreed. Clause 46 : Conditional fee agreements: success fees Amendments 22 and 23 not moved. Amendment 24 Moved by