Legal Services Bill [HL]

That was not my surprised face; that was my disagreement face. When I talked about the in-house resolution, I was replying to a point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lyell, about fairness. I was very clear in my choice of language and I acknowledged that there could be circumstances in which complaints could have been dealt with in-house but that the procedures in-house were simply not adequate. That was the point that I was trying to make. I was trying to say that fairness is a concept that must incorporate all those involved in the system, whether they have a complaint made against them or not. The consequences of the proposals will have implications for all those people. There will be people who quite understandably will have done their very best to try to solve matters but cannot, and it is completely reasonable that the OLC needs to think about the circumstances that apply to them—precisely the people mentioned by, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, such as junior members of the criminal Bar. That issue was raised with me by the Bar Council and, as I indicated to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, in the context of family cases. I do not disagree with the issues raised by noble Lords. I was not seeking to suggest that, just because you cannot resolve a matter in-house, somehow you are guilty of something—far from it. I was simply saying that ““fairness”” is a concept that incorporates everyone involved in the process. I am perfectly happy to look at how we can capture that. I did not want to give the impression that ““fairness”” meant only one thing; rather, I was saying that we would have to deal with the question of what it means for everyone involved. The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, is clearly shaking his head, so I have not satisfied him at all. I am very clear about the principle behind what we are seeking to do here. We cannot capture all this in the Bill because, on the basis of what I have already said about Amendment No. 38, the professions, in conjunction with the OLC, need to be able to be consulted about the circumstances that worry them. The circumstances that noble Lords have indicated are ones that I have heard before, and I am sure that there are others that other members of the legal profession would wish to be taken into account. They would also want to be clear about the circumstances in which charges were waived and so on, so that everyone was clear about the position. That is the right way to proceed in this matter.