Legal Services Bill [HL]

I should be delighted to do that. The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, and I had a brief conversation about this earlier and I have received legal advice. He reasonably pointed out how Clause 3(2)(b) is drafted and said that, by removing the phrase, I would not be creating the problem I feared. I was fearful that the amendment would place an obligation on the board and on regulators to act in a way that was compatible with all of the regulatory objectives all of the time. That is obviously contrary to the principles proposed by Sir David Clementi which we discussed in part earlier this evening regarding the ability of regulators to judge for themselves how to balance one objective against another on a case-by-case basis. In the Bill there may be tensions between some of the objectives in some circumstances. A case may arise in future where the objective to improve access to justice is more important, as we discussed on the competition issue, than the objective to promote competition. In such a situation it would be difficult for the Legal Services Board to comply fully with both regulatory objectives. The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, will agree that in our earlier discussion, when we considered the matter, he thought that Clause 3(2)(b) addressed the issue and that we did not need to look at it again. However, I have now taken advice from lawyers in the department. I shall not read out the advice in detail but will send it to Members of the Committee who have spoken in the debate so that they can look at it properly. We do not think that the effect that the noble Lord seeks to achieve will be the one that is achieved. The problem that I have outlined would be created because of the way in which the Bill is drafted. The result would be that the LSB would have to act in a way that is compatible with the regulatory objectives and that the board considers most appropriate for the purpose of meeting those objectives. ““So far as is reasonably practicable”” qualifies both of those. They require different things that would be differently affected by no longer being qualified by ““so far as is reasonably practicable””. I shall stop there. However, that is the difficulty. The phrase is qualifying both, but in different ways. We shall discuss the point between now and Report to ensure that I have made that as clear as possible. I understand what the noble Lord seeks to do, but we need the provision in the clause in order to prevent the effect that the noble Lord’s amendment would accidentally achieve.