Cherie Blair uses no-win, no-fee deal for libel prosecution despite her six-figure income

She has a £1 million book deal, lucrative lecture fees and a six figure barrister's income, quite apart from enjoying the reputed £10 million her husband Tony has landed since leaving Downing Street.

But Cherie Blair is using a no-win no-fee deal with her lawyers to sue a Sunday newspaper for libel, it has emerged.

Conditional fee agreements, according to the Ministry of Justice website, are to provide "access to justice for those who could not afford to pursue litigation and who are not eligible for public funding."

Yet, despite the substantial family fortune, Mrs Blair now joins the ranks of Naomi Campbell and Sharon Stone in taking advantage of the sometimes controversial CFA scheme.

The no-win no-fee arrangement enables people to take legal action knowing they won't have to pay their lawyers' costs if they lose.

Their lawyers risk working for nothing, but if they win their legal team can charge the losing side a "success fee" up to 100 per cent extra on top of their normal rates to compensate them for the risk of failure.

Mrs Blair is suing the News of the World following an article in January that claimed she was engaged in a "secret feud" with Gordon Brown's wife, Sarah.

She is complaining about the story, which was printed under the headline: "War of silence: Cherie's secret feud with PM's Sarah".

Her solicitors Atkins said it had offered to work on a no-win no-fee basis for the former Prime Minister's wife because quashing the story was a matter of strong principle.

Her case is being dealt with by Graham Atkins, who founded the firm two years ago.

"The principle is deliberately harming our clients' reputations by fabricating stories about their personal relationships," he said.

"Atkins tends to only act on CFAs in the case of claims where either the claimant can't afford it - which is obviously not the case with Cherie - or we think that there's a very significant principle that needs to be dealt with.

"We do a tremendous amount of action against newspapers in relation to stories about Cherie, and these tend to be resolved before proceedings are issued.

"In this particular case, for a claim to have got to a point where we're issuing proceedings, it demonstrates how concerned and angry she is by this story and, from our point of view, how significant we think this story is in harming her reputation."

Mr Atkins added: "My client did not ask for a CFA, I offered it to her.

"We are not one of the firms that abuse the system by acting for wealthy clients, to increase costs to increase our profits, as all of our defendants/opponents will testify.

"Almost all my CFAs are for people who can't afford access to justice."

Since leaving Downing Street, the Blairs' financial fortunes have soared with the former Prime Minister landing a string of highly-paid jobs jobs including a £2.5million a year job with Wall Street investment bank JP Morgan and an estimated £2m a year as an adviser to the Swiss financial giant Zurich.

Mr Blair has also signed a £5m publishing deal for his memoirs and had a string of speaking engagements reportedly bringing in up to £100,000 a time on the lecture circuit.

Mrs Blair has signed her own seven-figure book deal and stands to earn £75,000 for three days work delivering a series of lectures during a tour of the United States this year.

While her husband was in office, she scaled down her workload as a barrister - when she was understood to be earning around £250,000 a year- but since he stood down she has resumed her lucrative work at Matrix, the legal chambers she helped found which specialises in human rights.

The CFA system was introduced over a decade ago to give access to the law for personal injury claims to those people who previously could not have afforded to do so.

It was later extended to include most civil cases, including defamation.

Twenty-two media organisations have written to the Ministry of Justice urging the Government to reform the CFA system, arguing that some lawyers are exploiting the system to hold news organisations to ransom.