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Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, the Government accept that insolvency proceedings are untypical of our reforms to CFAs in an important respect. Across many areas of law—for example, in clinical negligence cases against the NHS—the Government are on the sharp end of our dysfunctional CFA regime as it is the defendants bringing cases against claimants, sometimes speculatively. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, has said, insolvency stands apart because it is one of the few areas where CFAs sometimes work to the advantage of government departments; for example where an insolvency practitioner recovers moneys for the taxpayer and other creditors. So if these amendments were to be accepted, they would effectively constitute a carve-out for the key place where CFAs can be useful to the Government—this at a time when we are asking everyone else to adjust to a new, more sensible regime. We debated insolvency proceedings in Committee and I said then that we were considering this issue within government. I can report that we have thought about it carefully, but we do not agree that an amendment along these lines is the right way forward. I do not believe it is acceptable to say that CFA reform is good for everyone else, but is not good for the Government.