Legal Services Bill [HL]

I have 35 years’ experience as a family judge and 15 years’ experience as barrister before it, much of it in family proceedings. Family cases are highly emotional and very unhappy for those who engage in them. It is almost impossible to be objective about your own family problem. Whether in public law or in private law, the distress caused to litigants is enormous. Almost all litigants go away dissatisfied, most of them with the judge, which is fair enough, and many of them with the lawyer—the solicitor as well as the barrister—who represented them. The idea that unfounded complaints, some of which last for anything up to 10 years after the case is completed, should be met by the respondent having to pay is quite unjust. In that, I respectfully echo what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland. For this House to pass such a clause would seem to represent an opportunity for those with unjustified complaints to continue to make them in a new scheme as they had under the old schemes.