I refer to the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s advice on dealing with a litigant in person. It is particularly helpful to those who have not been there before. A litigant in person is in a better place than a litigant represented by an incompetent solicitor. Some years ago I made a tongue-in-cheek offer to a claimant’s solicitor, who accepted it.

My insurance client agreed with me that this was dreadful, so we asked our local panel solicitor to go behind this plaintiff’s solicitor’s back and tell him the right sum. He was happy. We paid his legal costs. In hindsight, perhaps we should have paid the nonsense sum and then told him to sue his solicitors!

Legal aid’s destruction is sad. Bad representation is worse.

Lindsay J Keith, Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex