Legal Services Bill [HL]

I am not asking the noble Baroness to exempt barristers; I am simply using the illustration of barristers who are not exempt to undermine the noble Baroness’s argument that solicitors are exempt because of the special circumstances of centrally employed lawyers. If that argument is to have any weight at all in justifying exemption for solicitors, it must inevitably follow that barristers should also be exempt. But in my submission the argument—which was, of course, extremely skilfully advanced by the noble Baroness—should nevertheless be ignored by your Lordships. One of the Government’s themes that has run through the Bill is that even if there is no evidence for a restrictive provision that the Government have put into the Bill, such provision is nevertheless vital from the point of view of public perception. Does that not apply to this question of exempting solicitors in government service—even if there is no evidence that there is any adverse impact, or there would be no adverse impact, on the regulatory regime as a result of exempting them? The perception of central government solicitors being exempt from this obligation is surely a bad one. It is also completely illogical. Why not accept, purely from the point of view of perception, that they ought to be included?