The family of Milly Dowler, the murdered schoolgirl, has attacked the government’s controversial plans to overhaul ‘no win, no fee’ deals. In a letter to the Prime Minister, Sally, Bob and Gemma Dowler said they wanted to make it clear they could not have reached the settlement without a no win no fee agreement. Without the insurance that the ‘no win, no fee’ deal or (conditional fee agreement, as lawyers call them) provided ‘we would not have been able to start a case or even threaten it’, they said. Read Matt Evans’s take on the Dowler’s support for ‘no win, no fee’ here.

The Dowlers told David Cameron that they were ‘lucky’ they were able to claim under the current system. ‘We understand that the new law will affect thousands of people who want to sue News International and other newspapers. We had understood that you were on the side of the people, not the press,’ they said.

ends