Lord Justice Jackson’s ill-conceived proposals for the reform of civil litigation have commenced their journey through parliament.

They represent the most seismic shift in civil litigation in living memory.

Many thousands of injured people who are innocent victims face a return to the days when only the rich had access to justice.

Sweeping, draconian changes, buried within four pages of a 196-page bill, intend to significantly shift the financial burden of bringing a claim from the defendant to the claimant.

Victims will pay the price for the government’s cost-cutting agenda.

They will have their hard-fought compensation slashed by the end to recoverability and some will find it difficult even to find a firm willing to take on their case.

Worse still, the bill has even more dangerous implications than previously thought, with no apparent reference to two key elements of the Jackson proposals - qualified one-way costs shifting and a 10% uplift on general damages - intended to lessen the impact on injured victims of the abolition of recoverability of after-the-event (ATE) insurance premiums and success fees.

Claimant lawyers will be forced to fight for their clients with one arm tied behind their back, the odds stacked in favour of the other side, often in the form of well-resourced organisations and large insurance companies.

Ultimately, no cost savings will be made at all - the financial burden will merely shift from the defendant insurance company to the victim and to the taxpayer.

As for the firms, charities and after-the-event insurers supporting these cases, job losses are inevitable.

Roger Smith, director of Justice, has warned what the future holds: ‘Courts and lawyers will be only for the rich.

There will be no equal justice for all, only for those with money.’

He joins a growing list of authoritative figures raising serious concerns, including three senior costs court judges - Masters Campbell, Haworth and Leonard.

They are not alone.

The MoJ received over 600 responses to its original consultation - the vast majority opposing the plans.

The fact that it took the government just six weeks to consider and reject each of these responses, without a single change made to the proposals, casts doubt on the integrity of the process.

One of the CJA’s members, the Spinal Injuries Association, has accordingly mounted a High Court challenge.

The government’s muddled thinking is shown by its extraordinary last-minute concession, allowing recoverability of ATE premiums for reports in clinical negligence cases.

Where is the logic in accepting this but denying it in the many other complex cases, including industrial deafness, RSI, and carbon monoxide poisoning, where expert reports are also required?

We keep hearing the phrase ‘compensation culture’ bandied about as justification for the reforms.

Yet, even Lord Young, until recently a government minister, acknowledged that this is a myth.

Crucially, the government’s own figures fail to back up the very idea.

The NHS, one of those well-resourced defendants, is handling fewer personal injury cases now than when conditional fee agreements were introduced.

In 1997/98 6,711 claims were brought and in 2009/10, that figure was 6,652. Does that really smack of a litigation system running wildly out of control?

Despite this, the government is choosing to paint victims as spurious claimants, driving the mythical compensation culture.

It deliberately fails to acknowledge that the compensation these victims are awarded is used to rebuild their shattered lives and those of their families.

Some will never earn a wage again. Many will need special care for the rest of their lives. This is no lottery win.

The bill will shortly enter its committee stage and we cannot afford for this to happen unchallenged.

This is the last chance to fight the Jackson reforms before they become a stark reality.

Nigel Muers-Raby is chairman of the Consumer Justice Alliance - an alliance of charities, victims’ groups, insurers and law firms set up to oppose the Jackson reforms