Legal Services Bill [HL]

The Minister has expressed complete understanding of what lies behind the amendment and, on earlier occasions, a recognition of the potential impact of establishing alternative business structures on legal services provision in rural areas. It appears that she is not at odds with the Committee in seeking to minimise that possibility, but she departs from that broad consensus in thinking that specific language to take account of the problem is not required in the Bill. Her doubts about the language chosen by the Law Society and very ably advanced initially by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, are hard to comprehend when she knows that the Law Society is not setting its face against alternative business structures and has drawn attention to how they might amplify consumer choice. The Minister does not draw attention, as she should, to the use of the word ““appropriate”” in the amendment, which sets at nought the anxiety that, by referring to a particular objective, it will blot out the other objectives in Clause 1. It is clearly implicit that in drafting the rules the licensing authority can do only what is appropriate in the context of the rest of the Bill. This is not the first time that we have addressed these questions, so the fact that they will be reconsidered again does not reassure me, when the committee over which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, presided recommended that explicit language was needed—not just a ministerial assurance about broad objectives, not something encompassed in the broad objectives spelt out in Clause 1, but specific language dealing with this clear and present risk. I should like to hear before this debate concludes that some effort is being made by inventive aides to the Minister to tackle this problem by legislation.