Legal Services Bill [HL]

I, too, support the paving amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, and particularly his Amendment No. 137, which seeks to introduce a new clause allowing for the possible—I put it no higher than that—delegation to an approved regulator of the power to give redress, which is otherwise with the Office for Legal Complaints. Dealing with the point that under Clause 154 it is prohibited for any redress to be given by approved regulators in the Bill as it stands, we have—I cast no aspersion on the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, let alone the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss—loosely talked about delegation by the OLC. Amendment No. 137 stresses that the whole basis of any grant to the Bar of responsibility for handling complaints is in the hands of the Legal Services Board (LSB). I am happy to talk also about delegation in the loose sense because, if the amendment is carried, as long as the LSB so directs, the Bar—no doubt it will be the new Bar Standards Board, with its mixture of lay people and lawyers—will handle complaints. The value of delegation has been put extremely clearly by all those who have spoken so far. The value lies in the knowledge of those who will deal with the complaints, in the expertise and in the thorough high standards, which have been praised throughout by independent people—including Miss Abraham and Miss Manzoor, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, has described—as well as the monetary value of having this enormous amount of important work done pro bono by members of the Bar acting free of charge. To the value of the Bar handling the complaints I would add, finally, expedition. That came out particularly in the exposition of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. It is difficult to imagine another, more bureaucratic body being able to deal so expeditiously with these cases, combining expedition with fairness, natural justice and so on, and handling them in a way that is efficient and effective. One of the pieces of briefing that I received recently, about which I was most glad, was from the Law Society. It said that it accepted that its handling procedures for complaints over the years had been abysmal; it accepted the criticism. If this delegation amendment is passed into the Bill, the Law Society will not seek to attract delegation to itself. It knows—if I may put it this way; these are not the society’s words—that it is not yet fit for that. I was therefore very pleased that the Law Society has supported the Bar in the view that there should be a delegation power, as is proposed in AmendmentNo. 137, but it has no intention, thank goodness, to attempt to get the delegation itself. I feel that there is a great deal to be said for this amendment, and I support it.