Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising this issue and enabling me to talk a little more about the appointments process. We have drafted the Bill, as the noble Lord has indicated, to ensure that best practice is followed in the making of appointments through the monitoring and regulation of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. There is a potential conflict if we try to try to set out, in addition to that, considerations to which the Lord Chancellor and, as in the amendment to which the noble Lord referred that was passed in your Lordships’ House, the Lord Chief Justice must have regard, in making appointments, as principles appearing to them as best practice: they could conflict with the principles that have already been set out in the commissioner’s code of practice. In other words, we would have a set of principles established for how public appointments are to be made, and then, on the face of this legislation, the opportunity for those making the appointments to look at any kind of practice they consider to be appropriate. The amendment says, "““appearing to them to represent the best practice in making appointments””." I fear that that could take us in a very different direction because it would then be a subjective judgment on the part of those making the appointments about what they thought was best practice, as opposed to clearly laid down codes of practice and deliberations by the commissioner.