UK Parliament / Open data

Civil Liability Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful for those last few sentences from the Minister, which were very helpful and reflect the strong mood of the House. I must say that if we had had a brief fee clock going, with the number of very expensive lawyers here, it would have been going round quite rapidly. I will make one point, following what the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, said. I too am a non-practising barrister, but I would never do anything to suggest that advocacy was not valuable. Advocates are immensely valuable in our justice system.

I do, of course, have experience of sitting on the other side of the table from the “claims industry”, as I term it—and the last thing those people want is an advocate in the mix. Most of their companies do not employ that many lawyers: some companies have no lawyers at all, or just one on their writing paper. They want a paper-based or telephone-based operation, in order to process things as cheaply as possible. This would actually help advocacy, because it would try to push things back into the proper legal market and away from companies that have been commoditising the rather grubby process of grabbing money. But, on the basis of what the Minister has said, and knowing that we will be having discussions with a view to bringing forward some sort of amendment on the definition—no doubt several noble Lords who have spoken today will be involved—I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

791 c267 

Session

2017-19

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
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