Protocols still not finalised

The pre-action protocols for personal injury law under the Woolf reforms are still missing.

Nigel Tomkins, of the joint working party drawing up the protocols, says they were due to be released before Christmas and says he can not understand why they are still under wraps. "As far as I know they were finalised weeks ago. But I haven't even had a copy of them and I'm a member of the committee," he says.

A spokesman for the Lord Chancellor's Department says: "The protocols are being printed with everything else as a complete set" - in other words, when the civil justice rules are finalised.