Legal Services Bill [HL]

Once again, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, for explaining the detail behind the amendments. We have discussed a number of groups of amendments around Schedule 16. The purpose of Schedule 16 is, in part, to extend the Law Society’s intervention powers. These amendments build on the changes that have already been made. They would allow the Law Society, as the noble Lord said, to intervene in all cases where dishonesty is suspected or where practices have been abandoned by more than one of the principals, but they would also lower the threshold of steps that must be taken to try to trace the beneficiaries of any funds recovered on intervention. For the most part, these amendments are justifiable and in the interests of effective regulation. Therefore, I am extremely content to consider them—with one exception. I am not at the moment minded to accept the elements of Amendments Nos. 150ZB and 150Q. These are the elements that allow the Law Society to intervene in cases of a solicitor’s failure to properly attend to a practice. It is too vague a threshold for the exercise of intervention powers. We will need to consider that more, but I want to flag up those areas to the noble Lord as ones that at the moment I am not persuaded on. The others I am very happy to take away and consider. Obviously, we will talk to the Law Society about them.