Legal Services Bill [HL]

moved AmendmentNo. 4: 4: Clause 1 , page 2, line 1, at end insert— ““( ) quality of legal services and the standing of the profession”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the amendment; I shall not take very long about it. Surely, it is common ground that it is of crucial consequence that the quality of legal services should be regarded and recorded as such in the regulatory objectives and that the standard be maintained in the interests of both the consumer and the legal profession, whose interests in this context interact and are interwoven, because it goes without saying that bad advice is very expensive and does no one a service. Albeit—I concede this—that in other respects, regulatory objectives may compete and conflict, such is not the case with the quality of services. That stands on its own. In any decision under the three regulatory bodies set up by statute, quality of services must be taken into account on the balance of the regulatory objectives as a matter of prime importance and of principle. As to the standing of the legal profession, similar but by no means identical considerations apply—albeit that £2 billion a year is the sum of the export services of our legal profession. That was spoken to at Second Reading by the noble Lords, Lord Neill of Bladen and Lord Brennan, and other noble Lords. I am informed in a letter from the Bar Council that the senior partners of leading City law firms, heads of commercial chambers at the Bar, have most serious concerns about this which they have made very clear. They have been passed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is a matter of principle of generic application to the three regulatory bodies and it is also of importance—as I know the Minister accepts—that we must establish public confidence in the new regime. This is an aid to that. I beg to move.