Legal Services Bill [HL]

I am grateful to my noble friend for telling everyone that; it is true. The point of this story, which is direct experience, is that what was provided, at very low cost to the public, was a satisfactory procedure for the complainant—who was treated better than any complainant I ever came across in the General Medical Council—a judgment of superb quality and a fair procedure, all again at minimal cost compared with proceedings before the General Medical Council. So I say to the Minister: it ain’t broke, so why on earth is she trying to fix it in this cumbersome, bureaucratic, paper-creating and unecological way, both intellectually and in the most literal terms? Of course the Bar Council, and I think everyone at the Bar, accepts that we cannot have a different rule because we happen to be rather good at these things. That recognition is in subsection (2) in Amendment No. 137. By this amendment, we seek to ensure that the public have the sort of service which they are receiving currently from the changed Bar arrangements, which now have the independent injection of the Bar Standards Board. But of course we recognise that we cannot be made an exception, although these procedures have been running as it happens—this is an accurate figure—for the past 399 years. We recognise that we have to accept that the board should have the power to withdraw or vary a direction that these proceedings should be determined by the approved regulator—here, the Bar disciplinary procedure. But we invite the Government to recognise that they should accept the best of what is available. I argue that the Bar’s procedures could well be replicated elsewhere, save that it is difficult to create afresh when new professions—for example, the osteopaths, whose disciplinary procedures I have some knowledge of—seek to create their own disciplinary procedures. To turn history into regulations or a statutory form is very difficult. The point I seek to make is that these procedures are well tested and work. It seems to me to be completely pointless to introduce this huge edifice to replace something that is perfectly functional.