Legal Services Bill [HL]

I have already made the point in previous contributions, but I would like to underline it again. In a small solicitors’ firm there are various types of practice and different partners take on different responsibilities. One part of the firm may make a lot of money and the other part may make a loss. Perhaps I may give one or two examples, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lyell, mentioned that he was unable to. Making a will is a loss-leader. There is not much profit to be made out of making wills. Wills are made and kept in the solicitor’s office because probate can be a financially profitable business. In due course, the family come to the solicitor, the will is produced and, naturally, probate is undertaken by those solicitors. Conveyancing used to be a particularly profitable part of the work, especially when there were fixed fees. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lyell, referred to liberalisation. Conveyancing bodies were set up that completely undercut that market. I am too far removed from practice to say whether conveyancing is as profitable today as it used to be. The Government are concerned about the consumer, so: ““A cheaper conveyance, great. A free will, that is all right””. But in fact, on the profitable sides of the business depended much of the community work that a solicitor did. He got and still gets his work by providing a community service, so that he is known in a locality; he is a friend of people and to families over a wide range of matters. Through that, the profitable and the unprofitable come together. Nothing in the Bill suggests that a large firm coming in—an insurance company, shall we say, the AA or a supermarket; the sort of institutions that we have been talking about—will be in the least interested in providing that comprehensive service. They are not interested in the community; they are not interested in getting work in through their connections, through building clients in the locality over years—the word of mouth from one client to another—and so on. That is not how big business operates. It operates on the market. I started my remarks on Second Reading by saying that the market has taken over and that perhaps that is not a good thing. It does not follow that it is in the public interest—that driving down cost to the client will produce a better service. If we put into the balance the fact that solicitors in small towns—such as the small town in which I practised—have to make a living and have a reasonable standard of living for all the qualifications that they have obtained and the money that they have invested to reach their position, the weakening of the community service that large organisations are likely to bring is undesirable. The amendment is to be wholeheartedly supported, because at least it proposes a consideration of the wider community in the authorising of ABS services. In parts of north and mid-Wales that I know well, if the supermarkets, which tend to dominate on the outskirts of towns, take over the profitable parts and leave the rest, that will be against the public interest. The public interest is a matter that the regulatory body must take into consideration when it comes to alternative business structures.