Legal Services Bill [HL]

I wish to make a small point, without any notes. It may be thought that these arguments are advanced merely by great luminaries of the law, of whom there are many in your Lordships’ House, such as those who have spoken—those at the top of the profession. My plea is for those at the bottom of the profession. I more or less abandoned my limited practice to remain in academic life and to take part in the proceedings of your Lordships’ House in the 1970s. But I well know from my own case and that of students, whom I regularly saw go to the Bar, that the most important thing that is said to you, sometimes by people with whose outlook you violently disagree, is that you must say what you think is right. That belief, inculcated into a profession, is at the centre of what noble Lords have come to term ““independence””. It may be thought that independence is being talked of as some great luxury, but it is not a luxury; young barristers come to observe it as integral to their role. I am not saying, and I do not take other noble Lords who have spoken as saying, that the Government intend to interfere with that. But I can say with total conviction that if young students of mine were going from my seminars into a profession regulated by a board—I emphasise heavily the word ““regulated””—they would think twice about whether they still intended to occupy their position as they rose through the ranks of their chosen branch. It is therefore essential that young students, who have no direct voice in your Lordships’ House, know and can see in legislation that a new regulatory power introduced by Government over the profession that they intend to enter is appointed and exercises its powers with the maximum number of conditions imposed. They must be able to see that those whom they recognise as reasonably independent of government have a place in such matters. I believe that the Government will come to accept that that must be made clear in the Bill because I believe that they intend that the profession should remain independent. However, the profession must be made clearly to appear, from a student’s point of view, to be still in that condition.