Legal Services Bill [HL]

I spoke on Second Reading about this Bill and should perhaps declare my interest as a practising barrister, former member of the Bar Council and once chairman of the Bar. It seems that there is no argument of substance between the two sides today, because the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton of Upholland, was good enough to write to me saying there was no need to be concerned about the public interest. She said that the Government shared our interest and had put in references to the public interest in Clauses 3(3)(c), 27(3)(c) and 113(3)(b), provisions dealing respectively with the Office for Legal Complaints and a couple of other bodies. They have put those words in to control the activities of the three most important bodies created by this Bill. Once you concede that, there is really no basis in principle on which you can object to our proposal that the Bill should proclaim on its front the importance attached to the public interest—and that it not be a matter of scurrying through a lot of clauses and getting as far as Clause 113, if anybody goes that far. We should put it right up on the front of the Bill, just like the White Paper that was put out earlier about the public interest. It fits very well beneath the reference to the rule of law but ahead of that to consumers. Without abandoning my colleagues on Amendment No. 2, I prefer the notion of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, that this should go in as a separate provision, coming in as Clause 1(1)(c). That is the place it obviously belongs and it should be put in there. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for having written to me, and I hope we shall see further actions reflecting the body language witnessed earlier. The other point to make is that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, was the chairman of the Joint Committee of the two Houses that examined the Bill, to the best of our ability. Part of our second recommendation was that these words should be introduced into Clause 1. I thought that that was right when we made the recommendation, and I still think that it is right.