Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. Let me make it absolutely clear that I am not criticising in any way the staff of the committee, who did a fantastic job in a very short period of time. Whoever formed the draft release does not matter; it had to go through certain senior members of the committee, of course, otherwise it could not have gone out. So my criticism—if there is criticism—is not directed, nor would it ever be, at the staff of this House and another place who, I repeat, did a fantastic job in a very short period of time last summer. I was saying a word or two about costs. One of my concerns relates to start-up costs and the other to the costs of complaints. On start-up costs, as I think I began to say, all my experience of governmentleads me to the very firm view that costs arealways understated at this stage. It happens withthis Government, it happened with previous Governments—it is in the nature of Governments. I fear that the start-up costs may be understated in this case, too. I very much hope that the Government will look yet again at this issue—I know that they have reviewed it—to see whether current forecast costs are realistic. As to complaints, I have yet to be convincedthat it is appropriate for someone who has been unsuccessfully complained against to have to meet the costs of the complainant. That seems on the face of it unfair. I know that there are problems in meeting costs in questions of complaint and I hope that we will be able to clarify the position at a later stage of the Bill’s progress. But overall, in my view, this is an excellent Bill. I wish it good fortune and I look forward to playing some small part in debating its detailed contents in due course.