Legal fees row halts BP spill fund payouts The controversy arises as some claimants have not pursued their claims though the court process, but settled directly with the GCCF. They have argued that their money should not be collected to set up a fund from which fees and expenses for litigation could be paid to the Plaintiff Steering Committee (PSC), the lawyers marshalling the mass of legal cases related to the spill. An alternative outcome could have seen the PSC lawyers paid by the defendants at the end of the high-profile trial starting next month to apportion blame among the companies involved in the spill. This would have meant claimants who avoided the courts would not have shared in these legal costs. The GCCF said that it had temporarily halted all payments to claimants as it sought clarification of the order, but that the freeze was expected to be lifted shortly. The fund said it needed to know whether the order should be retrospectively applied to claims and that it was forced to freeze payments in order to tackle "administrative steps" to comply with the order. Under the ruling, the GCCF will hold back 6pc of any payments made to private claimants, to be put into a court-supervised escrow account, where money is placed in the hands of a trusted third party. In the case of state or government claims, the plan is that 4pc of the settlement will be held back. BP has so far paid $7.4bn to individual, business and government claims, it said on its website last month, of the total $20bn it has set aside. Separately, BP saw its share price rise yesterday on the back of the oil price, driven higher by speculation that escalating tensions between oil producer Iran and the West will choke supply. BP shares rose 2.4p to 471½p.