Legal Services Bill [HL]

Does the noble Lord agree that there is experience on the Continent, not least as the Weimar Republic gave way to the autocratic regime that followed, that judges, however much they might try to resist the power of the state, are in a much worse position to do so if they are not addressed by an independent advocate and the equivalent of what we have seen as the Bar in this country? It is a way in which the independence of the judiciary is surely linked to the independence of the profession which, if it is not independent, retracts from the independence of the judiciary itself.