Legal Services Bill [HL]

If I may respectfully submit, it is not just what I am seeking to achieve, it is what the amendment says. All the amendment requires is that an impact assessment is made by the licensing authority, which can then go back to Clause 1 and make of that impact assessment what it may. I am very struck by my recollections of debates during the passage of the Access to Justice Act 1999. The then Lord Chancellor was at pains to emphasise the importance of the principle of local justice locally delivered. He emphasised it in the context of magistrates, other local courts and criminal defence. Indeed, that was the basis on which the Government established the Criminal Defence Service in that Act. It must follow that the principle of local justice locally delivered should apply equally to legal advice. Legal advice locally delivered must complement the principles of the public provision of courts and defence services. Over a very long period that principle has run through government thinking about the law and the way it should be made accessible to the public. The Government are often accused of changing their principles or, indeed, on some occasions, abandoning them. Here is an opportunity for the noble Baroness to stick to a declared principle of the Government that, as I understand it, has run through what successive Lord Chancellors since 1997 have sought to achieve. I put it to her that rejecting this amendment would be an open invitation to licensing authorities to ignore analysis of the access to justice impact of any proposed ABS.