Lord Justice Jackson criticised the way the government plans to implement his reforms to civil justice costs in a sternly worded letter to the justice secretary last week.

Jackson (pictured) said the detailed package of reforms aimed at reducing civil litigation costs, which he published last January, must be implemented in full if it is to achieve its aims.

In a letter to Kenneth Clarke, Jackson said the government’s proposals to amend some of his recommendations ‘would create perverse incentives and undermine the structure of the reforms’.

The government has generally accepted Jackson’s recommendations to abolish the recoverability of after-the-event (ATE) insurance and success fees, and to raise general damages by 10%. However, putting forward its proposals in a consultation paper, the Ministry of Justice suggested ATE premiums should continue to be recoverable insofar as they relate to the claimants’ disbursements, and that the 10% increase in general damages should apply only in cases funded by conditional fee agreements (CFAs), and be paid as success fees to solicitors.

Jackson told Clarke it would be ‘the worst of all worlds to retain elements of recoverability, thus adding to the present morass of rules and case law’, and ‘likewise, it would be a disaster to raise general damages in CFA cases but not in others.’In his response to the government’s consultation, published last week, Jackson said the present regime is being used perfectly lawfully ‘to generate disproportionate profits for a significant number of CFA lawyers’, which ‘imposes an excessive costs burden on the general public’. He said ‘the mass of rules and case law that surround recoverable success fees form a jungle, which should be cut down and cleared’.

Jackson said there was a ‘strong argument’ that general damages are already too low; that an across-the-board increase of 10% would leave the great majority of personal injury claimants better off; and that it is wrong in principle that claimants should recover more by way of damages or costs because they choose to fund their litigation by means of CFAs.

‘If the government’s proposed refinement is adopted, no claimant will be better off, some claimants will be worse off and all the extra money will go straight to lawyers,’ he said. ‘The fact the majority of claimants will be better off under my proposals is an important feature of the package. This fact also makes it surprising that claimant representatives are so strongly opposed to the recommendations.’

On referral fees, Jackson said an important part of any reform package ‘must be to cut out middlemen who add no value to the process’.