Legal Services Bill [HL]

While we are still dealing with Clause 1, I wanted to tell the Minister how much the Joint Committee appreciated the Government’s response in a number of amendments that have been made to the original draft Bill, particularly following our recommendation 3 in Chapter 3 that, "““the professional principles set out in clause 1(3) of the Bill should be amended to include the duty to the court explicitly in the professional principles””." I know that my noble friend Lord Neill of Bladen—if I may call him that—felt very strongly about that. We are very pleased that the Government felt able to re-word the professional principles to include that explicit duty. The Government also accepted our recommendation 4 in Chapter 3 that, "““the independence of the profession should be included explicitly in the regulatory objectives and that objective (e) should be redrafted to””," become the words that are now part of the Bill, which are, "““encouraging an independent, strong, diverse and effective legal profession””." Although the Government did not feel able to accept a number of our recommendations, it is right that I should pay tribute to the Minister and her colleagues for recognising the importance of those recommendations and implementing them.