The litigation funding industry is “deeply disappointed” that the Government failed to include a PACCAR fix in the King’s Speech. Frankly, that may be the most encouraging legal development of the year.

For months, ministers, the Civil Justice Council and claimant lawyers have insisted there is an “urgent” need to reverse the Supreme Court’s PACCAR ruling. Funders warn of uncertainty. They claim consumers are being denied “access to justice”. They demand immediate legislation.

But the Government’s refusal to rush through a legislative bailout could prove to be an overdue moment of restraint.

The PACCAR judgment exposed a reality the class actions industry would rather avoid discussing — modern litigation funding is no longer a niche mechanism helping impecunious claimants. It is now a multi-billion-pound investment model built around taking a cut of damages awards.

The Supreme Court simply ruled that agreements giving funders a percentage of damages looked very much like damages-based agreements under existing law. As Akin notes, that left many funding agreements “vulnerable to enforceability challenges” — especially in opt-out collective proceedings before the Competition Appeal Tribunal.

This is important because the explosion of UK class actions has been fuelled not by ordinary consumers, but by hedge-fund-style capital chasing returns.

The industry’s reaction to the King’s Speech has been revealing. Funders complain that PACCAR has created uncertainty and threatens the UK’s attractiveness as a litigation market. But uncertainty for whom? Certainly not for the public, who were never consulted on whether Britain wanted a US-style litigation economy dominated by third-party financiers.

Even Akin’s analysis quietly acknowledges the practical consequence of PACCAR — funders are now restructuring agreements to avoid percentage-based returns, instead exploring models based on multiples of deployed capital. In other words, this is an industry scrambling to preserve profitability after the courts finally applied proper scrutiny.

And despite the lobbying campaign, Parliament has — so far — declined to intervene.

That is a good thing.

The omission from the King’s Speech suggests ministers may finally recognise that this debate is about far more than protecting litigation funders’ business models. Before rushing to overturn PACCAR, Parliament should pause and confront some uncomfortable questions about why opaque funding vehicles are allowed to profit from mass claims with so little regulatory scrutiny, whether collective actions primarily benefit consumers or investors, and why the class actions industry is so desperate for immediate legislative protection.

The litigation lobby frames every criticism as an attack on “access to justice”. It is not. Access to justice should never become a euphemism for speculative litigation backed by financial engineering.

PACCAR was a warning shot about the unchecked commercialisation of UK litigation. The Government deserves credit for not panicking at the first sign of pressure from funders and claimant firms.

No rushed fix. No special treatment. No blank cheque for the class actions industry.

For once, Westminster’s delay may actually be serving the public interest.