Legal Services Bill [HL]

The noble Lord’s case has been much enhanced by the amendment’s heading, ““Monitoring and research””. Those words are up there with apple pie and motherhood, as who can be against monitoring and research? However, I rather doubt whether monitoring and research require the detail of the proposed new clause and the requirement as to what happens to the results, and so on. In fact, the novelty and the great variety—I referred to those in an earlier amendment—of the likely business structures that will develop probably require continuous monitoring and research. That would be most helpful, but I am not sure that that is what the proposed new clause says. I am particularly concerned about the bull point towards the end of it, which says: "““This Part””—" that is, the whole of Part 5— "““shall cease to have effect five years after the date on which this section of the Act comes into effect””." We all said when we discussed the previous amendment how often alternative business structures will require a great deal of investment and capital. If the amendment were passed, we would stifle the development, and even the creation, of alternative business structures practically from the start. Either alternative business structures, with all the safeguards of licensing and so on that we talked about earlier in the day, are a good thing—as they are for giving new varieties of provision for the consumer and communities around the country—or you do not like them. The amendment would damage the possibility of this creative development in the Bill right from the word go, and I am wholly against it.