Legal Services Bill [HL]

This is a wonderful opportunity for us all to say that we look forward to the moment when that envelope sees the light of day. Amendment No. 4 would take us into the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 by making the appointment that of Her Majesty on the recommendation of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. As the noble Baroness has just pointed out, we still have the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. There is no doubt that, under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, there is a procedure which is far better to adopt where the appointment we are now debating is concerned. Although I will be speaking to Amendment No. 5, to which I have attached my name, I look forward very much indeed to hearing the Minister’s explanation as to why the Government decided on this course of action so far as the appointment is concerned. On several occasions I have heard Ministers reassure us all from the Dispatch Box that there is no need to worry because Nolan principles will apply. Of course, this is very much part and parcel of my experience in government. I was the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster who set up the Nolan committee to examine standards in public life. I recall our discussions with that committee when it established the seven principles of public life. Indeed, there was a feeling that those principles did not need to be spelled out, because they were so much part and parcel of what we all accept in public life; they are selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. They are features that have always been there in our public life and it was slightly sad that we needed to spell them out in such terms, but it is good now to have them on record. Although the Nolan committee at the time said that standards of behaviour in public could not be said to have declined, there was a perception that they might have. It was that perception that it tackled. It did not in any way substitute any other principles or guidance for the appointment of key people to government quangos, public bodies, et cetera. It did not remove the final arbiter of public appointments, namely the Minister concerned. Indeed, I recall that in his report the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nolan, spelled out in no uncertain terms that, when dealing with appointments, nothing that the Nolan committee produced removed the responsibility of Ministers to make the right appointment. This, therefore, is my response to members of the Government who keep quoting the Nolan principles. Indeed, nothing in the Nolan principles is substituted for the need to take consultations. As in this amendment, nothing in the Nolan report would inhibit Her Majesty the Queen—or, indeed, the Prime Minister—in making what they believed to be the right appointment. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 laid down a number of key principles and procedures that need to be followed, which is why I was persuaded by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, that this is, indeed, an amendment to which we should hear the Minister’s response.