Legal Services Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for being so gallant in the way in which he puts his comments about me not being on the right lines. I think I am, of course, as he will appreciate. Fairness means fairness to all the legal professions that pay towards this, and it means fairness to those who make complaints. I want a situation in which complaints never reach the OLC because they are dealt with properly in-house. If a complaint reaches the OLC, in some circumstances—and only in some circumstances—that may reflect a failure of lawyers to deal with it properly in-house. When other members of the legal profession would have dealt with it properly, I do not see why they should not bear some responsibility, even if the claim is unfounded, for the fact that it reached the OLC at all. I also want to incentivise them to ensure that they resolve matters in-house. I have tried to indicate that if the system is always free at the OLC, unfounded complaints will be sent up to the OLC. I am perfectly willing, as the noble and learned Lord would expect me to be, to look at whether I can capture fairness on the face of the Bill. However, my definition of fairness will be to include all those involved in the process, including those against whom a complaint is never made. I do not disagree with the concerns of the noble and learned Lord that when a complaint is not upheld, people should not incur huge costs, but the ambition is that if complaints get to the OLC, in a sense that means that they have not been dealt with properly in-house, as should be the case wherever possible.