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Under proposals in the legal aid bill, ordinary people including some phone-hacking victims, would not have had access to justice

The current proposals by the Ministry of Justice to abolish the recovery by the successful plaintiff for the success fee "no win no fee 'defamation and privacy cases and the recovery of" after the event "(ATE) insurance premiums is a harmful and dangerous attack on access to justice for citizens with low incomes.

Inevitably, these reforms are irreversible, the balance of power shift to an even greater extent in favor of big media companies (often foreign-owned) over the individual. Fewer lawyers in the situation, the risk of acting on "no win no fee 'take agreements. The ATE insurance market in this area of ??law will disappear.

These reforms are of legal aid, sentencing and punishment of the offender bill 2011, which already has a second reading in the House of Commons and is in danger of being included without proper scrutiny and debate adopted. MPs should not conditioned fully understands the implications of these changes for its constituents, as determined by the incessant media claim that the libel and privacy laws, the ball does not deserve celebrities and footballers.

Pay instead of the losers, as now, the successful plaintiffs have a substantial proportion of its funds or its own costs of damage - and are contrary to popular perception damages in libel and privacy cases are usually very modest. The absence of ATE insurance, most plaintiffs to prevent actions against the media if they are willing to share their home and threatened with bankruptcy, are lost if the case goes. This fits the popular press, because there is no cure for the normal individual will - a great saving in media companies, but with great effort and a terrible injustice to the public. Libel and privacy claims again become the domain of the very rich.

These changes will be pushed through at a time when the behavior of the tabloid press under unprecedented scrutiny to allegations of phone-hacking and the devastation caused to many people 'lives by violating the privacy and invented stories. Many are concerned that what was presented as a struggle for the freedom of speech is really about the preservation of the profits of large media companies.

The events of recent days have changed the landscape and things have been reported, which parts of the press would prefer to have remained buried.

Generated with all the turmoil, the parliament will also discuss a number of questions in the near future, including:

• The phone hacking scandal

• Libel Reform

• Privacy Policy Reform

• The use of so-called superinjunctions

• Civil court funding and conditional fee agreements

Of all these questions is the last one (who sees the most boring) in fact have the urgent and serious reform and the dramatic effect, when Parliament is wrong - by the media and online campaign for the suggestions Jackson.

For many years, ordinary people had access to the courts (free of charge and at no cost to the state) in the publication process through the use of conditional fee agreements (CFA).

There are many examples of people who have benefited from the use of CFAs. These include:

• The parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler

• Most of the plaintiffs in the phone-hacking law disputes

• Kate and Gerry McCann

• A Muslim bus driver who mistakenly from the sun is forcing its passengers in his bus so that he could pray, and that meant he might be accused of a terrorist. Includes photos and grossly intrusive (online) video footage of him in prayer

• The senior social worker in the Baby P case falsely accused in The Sun newspaper in 80 articles of being "criminally negligent" with regard to her care for Baby P

• A Danish radiologist sued the U.S. conglomerate GE Healthcare over allegations concerning one of its products

• A comprehensive teacher falsely accused in an internal memorandum of inappropriate contact with students

• A taxi driver, whose photograph appeared in The Sun newspaper, incorrectly described him as a convicted pedophile

• A charity falsely accused by the Daily Express of improper use of charitable donations

• An unemployed woman falsely accused of the attempted murder of a regional newspaper

• An unemployed man who was the subject of false statements, which was on ITV about a medical condition

• An officer falsely accused by The Guardian, responsible for the mistreatment of prisoners

• A family whose son 's suicide was reported invasive in a national tabloid

• Families of soldiers killed on active service, whose phones may have been hacked at a time when they were grieving for their loss

None of these individuals would have access to the courts before the reform of the Access to Justice Act 1999, the use of CFA to promote the state relieve the burden of provision of legal aid funding.

Until the last week or so, the press has gone, with claims that our privacy laws are easy to judge against the will of Parliament and our defamation law is a joke. Recent developments mean that few now hold such views, or at least are willing to print it.

But for CFAs many cases of media abuse (the recent phone-hacking scandal being the major and current example) would not have been exposed. Some newspapers have a habit of dragging out cases for years to deter individuals from pursuing claims, taking advantage of the vast disparity in resources between the press and the claimant. In the phone-hacking scandal it took the News of the World four years to admit the scandal was not limited to just one rogue reporter. It did so only when it was faced with overwhelming evidence obtained through civil court action largely funded by lawyers acting for clients under CFAs.