Meeting of the Parliament 26 April 2018
Amendments 5 to 8 are technical in nature. We have been working with Her Majesty’s Treasury on the United Kingdom Financial Guidance and Claims Bill, which will now regulate claims management companies in Scotland. The Treasury envisages success fee caps being imposed by professional rules. Those will be rules of the Financial Conduct Authority in the case of claims management companies, or rules of a legal services regulator in the case of solicitors.
It is thought at present that there is little likelihood that success fee caps in professional rules and success fee caps under section 4 of the bill will interact. Success fee caps in professional rules could, however, interact with success fee caps under section 4 if the Westminster secondary legislation on claims management companies changes at some point in the future.
In addition, the current legal services review that the Scottish Government has instructed could lead to changes in legal profession regulation that change the extent or nature of professional rules applied to solicitors.
Therefore, in effect we are seeking to provide future proofing. Specifically, the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, which is to be amended by the UK Financial Guidance and Claims Bill in order to regulate claims management companies, will allow the Treasury to make regulations to give power to the FCA to make professional rules. Such rules would be tertiary legislation.
Amendments 5 to 8 will amend section 4(3)(b) and section 4(4) of the Civil Litigation (Expenses and Group Proceedings) (Scotland) Bill to ensure that success fee caps made in professional rules in accordance with an enactment will be treated the same as success fee caps made in an enactment. The policy in section 4 has always been that where there are two sets of fee caps, the lower one has effect.
The amendments reflect that a fee cap in professional rules might not count as a fee cap in an enactment and, therefore, the relevant text will become
“by, or in accordance with, an enactment”.
I reiterate that we do not expect the Westminster fee caps as currently proposed by the Treasury to interact with those to be provided further to this bill.
Amendments 13 and 14 are also technical drafting amendments. Amendment 13 combines section 10(2B) and section 10(3A) into one subsection that indicates the circumstances in which subsection (2A) does not apply. Thus, there will be a single subsection providing that the providers of success fee agreements and trade unions and staff associations will not be at risk of an award of expenses. Amendment 14 is a technical drafting amendment that ensures that the first reference to the Lord President of the Court of Session in section 13A uses the Lord President’s full title, which is already used in section 9(3). Given that both amendments are minor and technical, they do not make any substantive changes to section 10 and section 13A.
I move amendment 5.
Amendment 5 agreed to.
Amendments 6 to 8 moved—[Annabelle Ewing]—and agreed to.
Section 6—Personal injury claims