Legal Services Bill [HL]

It is his choice, not mine. I have already told him I think that he should. He talked about pro bono work, and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, may have referred to it obliquely. I declare my interest: I spent 15 years of my life developing programmes for pro bono work across a whole range of professions, including the legal professions, to support many community projects. I was a director of Business in the Community, an organisation familiar to many. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, was our legal adviser, so I worked closely with him there as well. Interestingly, it was in the main the larger, high-quality firms which were able to offer pro bono work. The difficulty for the smaller organisations was having the resources and the economies of scale needed to release people for that expertise. I remember the noble Lord telling me 20 years ago that his firm got more applications from graduates than any other. It was because of the company’s ethos and approach; it gave graduates opportunities beyond the legal professions. I am sure that he was right and that Members of the Committee who belong to legal firms or know of them will also know that that is one of their attractions. Pro bono work, secondments and so forth, have always been an added bonus, particularly in attracting the brightest and best from those who wish to go into the profession. From everything that I know about this, I do not accept for a minute that pro bono work would suffer as a consequence. That is simply not the case—quite the opposite. The more opportunities that are available to a company—because it is bigger and more able to cope—the better. I do accept, and have accepted throughout our discussions on Part 5, our need to ensure within the legislation that we have achieved the things that I mentioned to the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland. We must ensure that safeguards are correctly in the Bill, look again to see that the regulatory objectives are properly covered and take forward the monitoring. We must do those things and look again, without commitment because I do not know what will come forward as a consequence. The Committee should support this measure, not only in the interests of the consumer, important though that is, and not just in the interests of the opportunities for the profession, important though they are, but because I believe fundamentally that this is a new and important step in making sure that our citizens and our professions get the right quality services. Parliament should support that.