A leftie lawfirm with a history of employing Labour MPs is drumming up a class action lawsuit that could cripple M&S following a devastating cyber attack, says James Price
Despite long, painful memories of being dragged by my mum around the clothes section and made to wait outside the changing room, Marks and Spencer is as close to a national treasure as a high street staple can get. So it was as much a shock to me as millions of other customers last year when I walked into an M&S (for a packet of Percy Pigs, naturally) to learn that they were unable to take orders due to a crippling cyber-attack.
As governments and businesses get more reliant on ever more complicated tech, we shouldn’t be surprised to see cybercrime becoming a more attractive proposition. If M&S thought this was as bad as it could get for them, including seeing almost all their profits for the year wiped out, however, they were wrong.
Despite the fact that they didn’t give away any customer passwords (something which they will have to the Investigation Commissioner’s Office) M&S have been attacked again. This time, by leftie lawyers.
That’s right, no sooner had they dealt with the cyber criminals than the next generation of ambulance chasers decided to kick a company whilst it’s down.
In this case, it’s Thompsons Scotland, who have been reported as “drumming up a class action lawsuit against the supermarket giant”. This law firm is closely aligned to the trade union movement, and the Labour Party itself, and according to the Daily Express are threatening job losses and even the collapse of Marks and Sparks itself.
Their claim “argues that M&S customers should be entitled to compensation due to the ‘distress and anxiety’ caused by the hack”. This is the worst mix of snowflake-ery mixed with sanctimony, but it could have serious real-world consequences. No wonder the excellent shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith has described the whole thing as “a party-aligned lawfare agenda”.
Due to changes by, yes, the Tories whilst in government, these American-style class action lawsuits are now much more common and are crippling businesses and clogging up the courts. It’s rarely even the ordinary people in the lawsuits themselves who see any real benefit from it; that privilege goes to the law firms and those money men who fund the litigation.
No class
Who are the leftie lawyers working in this murky world? Well, many of them are claimant lawyers who work for trade unions and end up as left wing Labour MPs. Thompsons Scotland’s English sister company has previously employed four current Labour MPs: Warinder Juss, Andy McDonald, Richard Burgon and Jo Stevens. Jake Richards worked for another of these firms, and the City minister herself, Lucy Rigby, at another still. Lord Hermer, the Attorney General who is hell-bent on giving away sovereign British territory and says he will never disagree with the ECHR, even gave the annual ‘Thompsons lecture’ last year.
Research by the Adam Smith Institute has shown the damage this is causing, with £135bn in claims in 2024 alone. Perhaps more worrying still, an industry insider told City AM in September that Rigby “provides claimant firms with an “influential” ally at a time when “Labour’s New Deal for Working People promises expanded collective bargaining rights reforms, which could pave the way for US-style class actions in the UK”.
A government led by a lawyer is making an ass of the law
So at the same time that Labour are clobbering business with the Employment Rights Bill, business rates increases are whacking hospitality, and energy costs are rising still further, the City Minister seems to be on the side of leftie lawyers who want to go after beloved British companies.
Coupled with the removal of jury trials, accusations of two-tier justice and the prospect of Britain being forced to take back Isis bride Shamima Begum, Labour is overseeing the diminution of what has historically been the greatest legal system in the world. While Parliament is more excited talking about international law and geopolitics, they are at risk of causing lasting harm to the British domestic legal system. A government led by a lawyer is making an ass of the law.
This is not just a stitch-up, this is an M&S stitch-up.
James Price is a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute