Legal Services Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 1: 1: Clause 1, page 1, line 5, at end insert— ““( ) protecting and promoting the public interest;”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 31, 32, 115, 116 and 331. The Government have given very serious consideration to the view expressed by noble Lords in Committee that recognition of the public interest should be given greater prominence in the Bill. I thank all those who took part in those debates and who subsequently gave me the benefit of their advice on how I might take this issue forward. I was very persuaded by the views expressed, and I now bring to your Lordships’ House this group of amendments to alter provisions in the Bill which deal with the public interest in a way that I hope noble Lords will feel able to support. In Committee, noble Lords felt that there were two principal ways in which we could achieve this objective, and I want to explain why I have taken the approach that I have. I resisted the initial thoughts of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, who sought to add the public interest to the objective of protecting and promoting consumers’ interests, which noble Lords will find at Clause 1(1)(c). I said in Committee that I was concerned that that had the potential to create confusion because, as noble Lords indicated, the consumer interest and the public interest may not always coincide. Although we expect to see a healthy tension between individual objectives, I want to try to prevent the creation of tension within each objective. Therefore, I was more attracted to the proposition of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, who cannot be with us today. He proposed creating a new regulatory objective to protect and promote the public interest, which I felt had the clear advantage of recognising the need to protect and promote the public interest as an important objective in its own right. As a consequence of setting out this duty as a regulatory objective, it is necessary to remove the existing duty to have regard to the public interest at Clauses 3, 27 and 113. I beg to move.