Implementation of Jackson reforms put back to April 2013

The government has announced that implementation of the Jackson reforms, originally expected in October this year, will be postponed to April 2013. The announcement was made on Monday as the House of Lords started to debate the relevant provisions in Part 2 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill. The government had already announced that the legal aid provisions in Part 1 of the Bill would be implemented in April 2013, subject to parliamentary approval, and there had been some speculation that implementation of the Jackson reforms would slip as well. The changes being introduced under the Bill include:

• removing the restrictions on contingency fees or “damages-based agreements” (DBAs) for civil litigation;
• abolishing the recoverability of conditional fee agreement (CFA) success fees and after the event (ATE) insurance premiums; and
• introducing additional sanctions for defendants who fail to accept a claimant’s reasonable Part 36 offer to settle.

A number of other reforms recommended by Lord Justice Jackson do not require primary legislation, but are being introduced via amendments to the Civil Procedure Rules. Over recent months, the Civil Procedure Rule Committee has approved a number of draft rules to implement the changes, with the intention that these would be held back until the so-called “big bang” implementation date for the Jackson reforms (see our posts on the "menu" option for disclosure, controlling costs / focusing issues in expert evidence, and the new approach to relief from sanctions for rule breaches). We assume these other changes will now also take effect in April 2013, rather than this October as originally planned.