The Government's proposed overhaul of 'no win, no fee' agreements is set to face further scrutiny following an appeal to the Prime Minister by the parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

The Dowler family has written to both Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to highlight the impediments to justice the proposed reforms could bring, including the claim that without a 'no win no fee' agreement, they would not have been able to bring their case against News International for phone-hacking.

The family has reportedly been offered as much as £3m to settle their claim, which came after revelations in July this year that journalists working for now-defunct tabloid News of the World had hacked into their daughter's phone after she went missing in March 2002.

The letter asks the Government to reconsider the proposed changes to civil litigation included in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Bill which the family argue may lead to "thousands of people" becoming unable to bring cases against news organisations.

The LASPO bill is set to see the abolition of the recoverability of success fees and associated costs in 'no win, no fee' conditional fee arrangements (CFAs), including after-the-event insurance premiums, with claimants to pay their lawyers' success fees instead.

The letter states: "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. Please do not change the law so that the ability to sue the papers is lost."

It continues: "We are sure that you do not want to go down in history as the Prime Minister who took rights away from ordinary people so that large companies could print what they like and break the law without being able to challenge them."

The news follows a similar appeal by Collyer Bristow litigation partner and chair of Lawyers for Media Standards group, Steven Heffer, to the House of Commons and the House of Lords in July this year, in which he also stated that plans to overhaul 'no win, no fee' CFAs will prevent all those except the rich from pursuing claims against the media.

Heffer noted that CFAs were also used by the parents of missing child Madeleine McCann and a senior social worker in the Baby P case.

However, despite rising pressure on the Liberal Democrats to contest the reforms of legal aid and civil litigation, Lib Dem peer Lord McNally – who has been overseeing the reforms alongside Justice Secretary Ken Clarke – this week indicated at his party's conference that compromise was not on the agenda, and that his job is to get the LASPO bill through when it reaches the House of Lords in November this year.

Click here to view the letter.

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