Legal Services Bill [HL]

This has been an interesting debate, eloquently put forward by noble Lords who have a great deal of experience, to which I do not seek for one second to do anything other than pay tribute. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford. He was indeed persuaded by my noble friend Lord Whitty, with a bit of pressure from me, to speak to the amendments on behalf of my noble friend, because that helps me to talk about the debate in a more rounded way than I might otherwise have been able to. I thought that he put them forward very eloquently, and I am sure that my noble friend will be extremely pleased with the way in which he did so. I accept that my noble friend would have done it differently, but none the less it was forcefully done. The purpose of this legislation is to set out a new structure for how we regulate and deal with issues concerning the legal professions. I feel a bit sorry for the Law Society, actually, after the comments that have been made. I accept everything that the ombudsman said about the Bar Council—there is no doubt that some issues could perhaps be better dealt with—but I also have no doubt that the council done extremely well. I have no doubt that the Law Society accepts that there are real issues to be dealt with, and, having met the trade mark and patent representatives yesterday, that they, too, would like to see an element of delegation. So I sit within the context of recognising the genuine concerns that different parts of the legal professions have about how this would work in practice. I have had the privilege of talking to the Bar Council about this, and will seek to do so again. The point about trying to set up a framework and a process is to ensure that it applies equally and appropriately to everyone. That is not a substitute for trying to criticise the way in which things have been done before. In a way, that is almost irrelevant. I am not suggesting that the Bar Council has not done a good job, and neither is the legislation. It does not seek to say that the council has not handled things well; it seeks to say that we wish to do things for the legal professions differently. Without falling into the trap that I will be accused of—of representing the consumer alone—I should say that that is based on consumer concerns, which are important and which noble Lords in all parts of the Committee have recognised as being an important element of what we are seeking to do. A different weight and emphasis have been put on that, but it is very important. The idea that we could simply have a system that is then delegated back does not work for me. I say this as neither a lawyer nor a consumer of legal services. If you are going to set up a system, you have to make sure that it applies equally to all to give the greatest confidence in that system. The issue that the Bar Council raised with me and is particularly concerned with—and this brings me to the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Whitty—is to ensure that the quality of the work done by the Office for Legal Complaints is as good as the quality of work that is currently on offer. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said, ““If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it””, as his shorthand way of describing a system that works well and which he sees no reason to alter. Because it works well, there is a concern that the emphasis on the work done by the Office for Legal Complaints will not be on ensuring that there are high-quality people able to deal with these matters appropriately. That brings us to paragraph 15 of Schedule 15, which is an important part of how this might operate, and to my noble friend’s amendments. We are trying to recognise expertise and experience and to enable the Office for Legal Complaints to buy in that expertise so that the quality of how complaints are dealt with does not suffer. We are trying not to do that in a way that fails to recognise the genuine concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, on behalf of my noble friend, that this is not a delegation by the back door. Part of the conversations that we will continue to have with the Bar Council and others is to ensure that the Office for Legal Complaints is high quality and able to tackle issues appropriately by buying in and building on experience and expertise currently in existence in a cost-effective way. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, was particularly concerned about the fact that the West Midlands decision would be a replication of the Leamington Spa experience in a different location. First, no guarantee has been given that 100 per cent of the staff will transfer; TUPE’s application does not guarantee that. A number of factors will come into play with regard to how that works, including whether there are roles for staff to transfer to. We want to make sure that the Office for Legal Complaints is built from the ground up, so it will be an entirely new organisation. It would be a foolish Government who, when looking at how to deal with a new organisation, did not look at what had happened before. Almost inevitably there will be high-quality staff who are able to perform functions in the new organisation. The reason behind the West Midlands proposal is to recognise that there will be people—and I am sure that they exist and are doing a good job—in the current operation who could transfer across and continue to offer a high-quality service. That does not suggest anything other than that we buy in appropriate expertise from those individuals; it does not suggest that we do not need to think structurally very differently about the new organisation in management and process terms and so on. But the idea that nobody should be made available from the previous organisation would be wrong. Given the cost-benefit analysis that has to be done, it is appropriate to consider the West Midlands as a location, but that does not mean that we are simply replicating an organisation that is not seen to be successful in a new one.