Legal Services Bill [HL]

I agree with a huge amount of what the noble Lord said. I say again that the Government took on board the recommendation and sought to achieve it in the Bill in two ways. One was to put it in the clauses that we have already talked about—Clauses 3, 27 and 113—to make clear the organs that are being developed under the Bill. But we also believed that, when the regulatory objectives were taken together, we had dealt with the public interest: if the regulatory objectives were being dealt with, then the legal professions would be operating within the public interest. Noble Lords have talked about the difference between the overarching public interest that is served by the legal professions and by regulation—that is the point that I was seeking to make—and the interests of those on the receiving end of the services where regulation is important in ensuring that a proper and fair deal is had. That, in a sense, was the point made by my noble friend Lord Whitty, who has lobbied me not at all on this issue. However, I am pleased to say that I have met representatives of organisations who have talked me through some of these questions from their perspective, and I am grateful to them, as I am to the Law Society, the Bar Council and others. Within this debate, we were looking to recognise the strength of feeling in this Chamber that this matter needed to be considered and to think about how best to reflect what noble Lords have said. As Members of the Committee know, the different amendments offer different approaches. The view that I have taken from the debate is that we probably need to think about the public interest in a slightly more overarching sense. Obviously, I shall need to consult colleagues because I am not the policy Minister in this case, but I think that the sense of the debate is to go in that direction and I have no difficulty with that. But we also need to be mindful of the purpose of the regulation, which I think is where my noble friend Lord Whitty was coming from. I hope that I have answered the noble Lord’s points. There was no desire to move away from the issue; it was simply that we felt that we had achieved what was desired. If we have not, we need to think about that. However, from our perspective, the combination of objectives ensures that the public interest is served; simply inserting it as one objective would not achieve what we thought we had achieved and might not be as good as what could be achieved if we thought about it again. I hope that the fact that I will talk to noble Lords between now and Report will be acceptable to the Committee.