Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, of course quoted me accurately. I took away this amendment and looked to see whether we should remove the negative and put in the affirmative procedure for the reasons I outlined in Committee. When we looked at it, I was struck by two problems. I should say that I stand by my remarks about the purpose to which it should be put. The first difficulty was making sure that we would be able to find parliamentary time for debate and, secondly, whether the tradition of always going along with the Delegated Powers Committee was something that I wished to move away from. These may not seem like very good reasons to your Lordships. Indeed, if this were a matter of great importance, that would be completely reasonable. However, the purpose of this clause is exactly as I said in Committee. It makes sure that if gaps need to be addressed, not least because the Legal Services Board takes on new functions, that could be done properly and speedily. Secondly, it would also enable us to reduce the size of the board if that were appropriate, which is something we did not touch on, but on which I have had many conversations since Committee stage. I know that we will come to the bureaucracy and cost of the board, and the way in which it functions and so on, particularly its relationship with frontline regulators. None the less, those are important issues. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, because I have not done what I said I would do. Before we got to this stage of debates, I indicated that there were some issues on which I have had to reflect again. This is one of them. The negative procedure will still give your Lordships the comfort needed to make sure that this process works well and is in line with what the Delegated Powers Committee recommended; namely, that it saw no need for this to change. That is my preferred option at this point.