Legal Services Bill [HL]

The minute I seethe noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, I always think: Scotland. Then I check whether I have information about it. The way that the alternative business structures will be established means that they will cover England and Wales only, so it is difficult to see how they could impact on access to justice in Scotland, other than on what can already happen. A firm could decide that it wished to put more resources into England, Wales or Scotland. That would happen as a matter of course. They are entitled to provide only the reserved legal services through entities that they establish in England and Wales. To provide services from Scotland they need to be authorised or permitted by the Law Society of Scotland or the Faculty of Advocates. So there is no direct impact on access to justice other than what would happen when any firm decided to do something for business reasons and changed how it worked.