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One of the country's top judges has spoken out against the practice of earmarking clients for personal injury solicitors, often at considerable cost.
Lord Justice Jackson said that insurance companies and others who charge so-called 'referral fees' for details of their most valuable customers were "middlemen who add no value to the process".
Lord Jackson is the latest high profile figure to highlight the issue, which was first brought to the public's attention by Jack Straw.
Straw, the former Labour Justice Secretary, headed an investigation which found the cost of personal injury claims had doubled in the past 10 years - to £14 billion. He named referral fees as a contributing factor.
Speaking in Cambridge, Lord Jackson gave examples of certain personal injury lawyers paying £10,000 for a single client.
"There is now far too much money swirling around in the system," he said. "This has led to a progressive escalation of the referral fees which lawyers pay to get a share of the business.
"Thus the beneficiaries are not the accident victims, but usually the referrers... these middlemen who add no value to the process are the true beneficiaries of competition."
In the speech Lord Jackson, who last year called for 109 separate reforms to the no win no fee system, said referral fees should be scrapped.
He also accused the Law Society of putting the interests of some personal injury solicitors above the public good.
