Legal Services Bill [HL]

moved AmendmentNo. 9: 9: Schedule 1 , page 112, line 12, leave out ““Secretary of State”” and insert ““Lord Chancellor”” The noble Lord said: These amendments grouped together give the Minister the opportunity to address a central issue of our previous discussions—why the Secretary of State and not the Lord Chancellor. Amendments Nos. 9, 11 and 17 deal with appointments to the board by the Secretary of State. Amendments Nos. 20 to 23, 25 and 26 deal with the removal from office of members of the board by a Secretary of State. Amendments Nos. 27 to 30 deal with borrowing and accounting, and Amendment No. 36, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, primarily deals with reports to Parliament. There are two possibilities why the term ““Secretary of State”” is introduced. The first is that the Lord Chancellor is now to be regarded as a title of an honorary kind and that his office within the Government is now to be known as Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, in which case we should cease thinking of the Lord Chancellor as anything other than a title with little power. The second explanation is that the Government envisage that control over the Legal Services Board should pass from the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs or the Lord Chancellor to another department of government. That is the point at which we all become particularly concerned. The position of Lord Chancellor is at the apex of the legal profession. Anybody who has achieved that office is devoid of further ambition because there is nowhere higher to go. It is the absolute pinnacle. Consequently, a person holding the office of Lord Chancellor has been able to hold it without concern for his own personal future or the future of anything else. He fulfils the duties of that office. The office of Secretary of State, on the other hand, may—particularly if the Secretary of State is in the other place—be held by a person with departmental or non-departmental responsibilities. It may be held by an ambitious person, who wishes to make their way and is therefore anxious to please those in power within his or her particular party at a given time. The Secretary of State is a very nebulous concept. We believe that appointing members of the board—and, in particular, removing them from office—should remain in the hands of the Lord Chancellor. We still wish to uphold that office, not as a title to be handed around within the Government as a bauble, but as representing a person who, as hitherto, has reached the very top and has no further ambition. The purpose of tabling these amendments is to enable the Government to give us a full explanation of the use of the expression ““Secretary of State””. I look forward with interest to what the Minister will have to say. I beg to move.