Legal Services Bill [HL]

If I can just finish the sentence. I prefer that the Lord Chief Justice should have to give his imprimatur—he should concur with, or approve of, the appointment. There were differing views, which I acknowledge, but as I was the chairman of the Joint Committee, I would want to go with the report of the committee and that is to what I now speak. What has the response of the Government been? I quote from the speech of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. At Second Reading, he dismissed our recommendation in these terms: "““The Joint Committee … suggested that such appointments and dismissals should be made only after full consultation with the Lord Chief Justice. While I can see why that would give comfort to members of the legal profession, I have to say it gives little comfort to consumers””—" he continued with words that I am sure, or I hope, he now regrets— "““who rightly see the Lord Chief Justice, although he is a man beyond reproach, as another lawyer in the process””.—[Official Report, 6/12/06; col. 1164.]" I wanted to emphasise the importance of knocking that down. The Lord Chief Justice is not just another lawyer in the process; he is a judge. He is not only a judge; he is the most senior judge. He is a judge of independence and integrity who is seen as having that independence and as being full of integrity. He is in a special position. That is why the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen, is right to single out the Lord Chief Justice—although there are differing views as to whether the wording should be ““approval””, ““concurrence””, or ““in full consultation with””. This is really the whole point of the debate—to try to persuade the Government that there should be something in the Bill that makes it clear that the Lord Chief Justice has to be involved in the appointment. To some extent we are in the dark, as came out in the previous debate. We do not know who is going to be the Secretary of State. At the moment we are in abeyance. We do not know who is going to be the Prime Minister later this year, although we have our suspicions. We are told by Mr Brown that it will probably be him. I do not know whether it will be. What I know is that this House sadly failed to persuade the Government that the Lord Chancellor should be a Member of this House. It also failed to persuade the Government in a number of other respects—that he should be a lawyer and so on. Therefore, later this year when Royal Assent is looming for the Legal Services Bill, we may be faced with a Secretary of State who is not in this House, who is not a lawyer and who is first and foremost a party person. Indeed, there are some who are clearly seen as party people, while others are seen as more statesmanlike. I do not know. The Minister indicates that it may be her, in which case a lot of my fears are removed. But it may be anybody. When we are dealing with the appointment of a quasi non-governmental organisation—a quango—that is going to regulate an independent legal profession, a signal needs to be sent. As the president of the Law Society and chairman of the Bar have constantly reminded us, there are foreign, protectionist jurisdictions that would love to have the opportunity of pointing the finger at the legal profession in England and Wales, saying that it is controlled by government and giving examples. The Minister will recall that our Joint Committee was concerned that there were a number of references to the Secretary of State—in fact, there were 111. When I revealed at Second Reading that the number of references to the Secretary of State had increased from 111 to 288, I placed somebody’s health in jeopardy; it is the only time that I have ever been interrupted in Hansard—it is at col. 1180—by a noble Lord saying, ““Good gracious!””. But the Minister has sought to reassure me by saying that, "““the number of times the Secretary of State is mentioned does not necessarily correlate to the number of powers he exercises. In addition, I would also like to stress that we have sought to remove the Secretary of State’s role in respect of a number of different functions””." Fine, but still the number has gone up and it was calculated on exactly the same basis—not the number of functions but the number of references. The number has still gone up from 111 to 288. The Bill grows and so does the role of the Secretary of State. In that context, it becomes increasingly important that the power of appointment and indeed the power of removal should be seen as a power exercised by a non-political Minister. We would have far preferred it to be a Lord Chancellor in the mould of predecessors in that office. Nevertheless, if the power is to be exercised, it must be done at least in consultation with and, as the noble Lord’s amendment says, with the concurrence of the Lord Chief Justice, which in practical effect would be more or less the same thing, but we can debate that. Certainly the Lord Chief Justice should be named in the Bill as not just another lawyer and not just as a representative of a consumer organisation, but as the symbol of an independent legal profession of the greatest integrity respected across the world. That is why the Minister must start to give ground and begin to explain to us what she would accept and what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor would accept, which would communicate right across the world that nothing is going to change and that the English and Welsh legal system will still be the independent legal profession that is widely respected globally.