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The ban on referral fees should not be limited to personal injury, a committee of MPs has said. It also called for the Information Commissioner to have the power to compel audits of law firms to check for breaches of the Data Protection Act.

An outsourced accident management scheme run by Ford UK to bypass referral fees and credit hire costs has found that just one person out of 180 customers who reported an accident proactively sought to make a personal injury claim.

Parliament needs to tackle lawyers, claims management companies (CMCs) and others trading in illegally obtained personal data “rather than obsessing” about phone hacking, the Information Commissioner claimed yesterday. Meanwhile, the Financial Ombudsman Service has accused some CMCs of providing a “second-rate” and even “shocking” service.

The Jackson reforms could “impact negatively on some of the most seriously injured or disabled claimants”, an influential committee of MPs has warned. It also called for a review of the regulation of claims management companies amid concerns about their role in clinical negligence claims.

Put six lawyers in a room and you may well get nine different points of view on referral fees. But could the end be nigh for this fierce debate, which has split the profession asunder for many years? As the Legal Services Board recognised in its decision last week – and secretly probably hopes – the advent of alternative business structures could render the issue irrelevant.