Meeting of the Parliament 26 April 2018
We are looking at legislation in which it is clearly set out that those cases are very complex, and the award amounts that we are talking about refer specifically to those cases. I rather think that the percentages that the member quoted do not reflect the amount of judicial expenses that recognise the complexity of the case.
The point of amendment 2A is to mitigate the amount that a solicitor can claim from their client’s award as part of their fee. To recap: if future loss remains ring fenced, there is no question of an injured pursuer’s future loss being eroded as part of a solicitor’s fee. However, if Daniel Johnson’s amendment 2 is agreed to, only awards of over £1 million will be subject to the conditions that are set out in the bill.
There is no provision in the bill for the amount of damages that lawyers can claim, because the Scottish Government has left the determination of those amounts to regulations. Amendment 2A therefore seeks to cap the amount of success fee that can be claimed in damages-based agreements to 1 per cent of any amount awarded over £500,000; those are the sums that tend to be involved in complex personal injury cases.
One of the least persuasive arguments that Sheriff Principal Taylor and Daniel Johnson have deployed in opposing the ring fencing of future loss is that it might lead to unscrupulous lawyers delaying cases in order to increase the past loss amount from which they can take their fee. Surely we should not be regulating to look at a small minority of people who do not reflect the practice of the Law Society of Scotland’s members; and surely the whole point of the bill is that it seeks to increase access to justice for an injured pursuer and ensure that they receive the support for a care package that they need for future loss.