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There was a time when it looked like the Jackson report was heading for the long grass. Instead, it has now been embraced almost in its totality by the Coalition government, with the referral fee ban being the piece of the famously “interlocking” reforms that few had expected to see until very recently. Though Lord Justice Jackson himself is becoming peripheral to their implementation, PI lawyers need to be planning now for a very changed future.

The justice secretary yesterday accused lawyers of lobbying for their own financial interests as MPs rejected amendments to the Jackson and legal aid reforms going through Parliament. A bid to halve the RTA portal fee was rejected but action on the issue promised.

The legal aid and Jackson reforms should come into force in October 2012, justice minister Jonathan Djanogly confirmed yesterday, as Labour launched a bid to make paying a referral fee a criminal offence punishable by up to six months in prison.

There is “no scintilla of doubt” that the Jackson reforms will be implemented but “twitchy solicitors” may play into the hands of civil servants by charging lower success fees – or even no success fees at all – as a result, a leading costs expert has said.

The family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler has called on Prime Minister David Cameron to scrap the Jackson reforms, saying they were only able to sue the News of the World over the phone-hacking scandal because they did not have to pay for after-the-event insurance.