Legal Services Bill [HL]

As the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, said, we have touched previously on location, and I shall try to tackle that first. When we were considering the location, there were a number of factors to take into account. Criticisms have been levied at the current organisation—I shall not reiterate them—but that does not mean, as I know noble Lords accept, that everyone in the organisation is not able to do a good and viable job responsibly. It will be three years before the OLC comes into being, during which complaints will still need to be dealt with. We have to think about ensuring that we retain staff whom we wish to see transferred across under existing TUPE rules and also that we think through appropriately value for money, the skills and experience that we will need, the commitment to TUPE, and the presumption against London as a location, following the Lyons review. If you put all those factors into the mix, in our view you end up saying that it is appropriate that the new organisation should be able to build on the skills of some, if not all, of the people currently involved. It will be a different structure, and we believe that it will certainly be a different culture due to the way in which it is being set up. None the less, there will be people who are fully able to do a good job, and we have therefore indicated that it would be appropriate to enable them to move across to the new organisation. We do not want difficulties for the Law Society, which there would be if over the three years people bled away and got new jobs because they were not prepared to relocate perhaps hundreds of miles away. That would create a very difficult set of circumstances over the next three years. That does not mean that we are recreating an organisation which, in general, people feel has not been able to do the job as well as it might, but it does recognise that lots of people within that organisation probably do a very good job and that they need to have the opportunity to work within the new structure. That is the business case that we have evolved. So we said that the new office would not be in Leamington Spa, where the current arrangements are at present, but that it would be in the West Midlands. Thus the staff who currently work there know that there are potential jobs for them. The new structure will be different. We do not know how many people will be able to transfer across in the way that TUPE allows but we certainly do not want to rule out any opportunities for people. I think that that is absolutely the right approach. However, as noble Lords made clear to me in Committee, it will be very important that it feels like a new organisation, not least for the good people who are going to work in it, and that it will be able to carry the confidence of the professions, the public and consumers. That is what we seek to achieve, and why it will be set up in this way. On the specific issues the noble Lord raised, he will know that, particularly as regards his first amendment about locations, we have put in a sunset clause after five years. We think that that is right and proper because the circumstances will change. We have therefore enabled the provision to disappear after five years. So it is not for ever and that appropriately tackles the problems I have identified as important. Paragraph 22 of Schedule 15 provides that any borrowing the OLC might do would need to have authorisation from the Legal Services Board and, through it, the consent of the Lord Chancellor. It enables a provision to exist in legislation that if the circumstances arise—currently unforeseen—the OLC would not be able to borrow any money without the agreement of the Legal Services Board and the Lord Chancellor. We have done that for reasons similar to those I have already given; not least because if it were to do that, there would be concerns in the context of how it is funded—a matter which I know we will discuss, no doubt at great length, later. But it is important to have those safeguards in place. So there is one safeguard with the sunset clause; there is another with the safeguards built into it which would enable that action to happen, should that be necessary. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, will understand our rationale in thinking that there is a very good business case for the location of the OLC so that the current work can continue, there will be the opportunity for skilled people to move across to it, and that it is recognised that this needs to be a new organisation.