Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, I was not seeking to rest on Clause 48. The factors in the way that we set up the Legal Services Board—to be proportionate and to act only where necessary—are combined with a number of other issues. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, described this as being threaded through the Bill. The noble Lord sees that in a negative way: perhaps I can be more positive. If you add all of these things together you endup with a relationship between the supervisory regulatory body and the front-line regulators that I believe represents, in large part, what noble Lords are seeking. My difficulty is that there is no way of expressing that in terms that would not constrain the supervisory regulator in an inappropriate way. That is the problem. We think that we have captured it elsewhere with the combination of objectives, the way in which the board has to operate in a proportionate manner and the fact that Clause 48 states that policy statements have to be produced. The combination is what makes that effective. The noble Lord may disagree, but that is what I am trying to achieve. I am not seeking to rest purely on Clause 48. I will deal with the costs, as they are an important issue. In earlier stages, we talked about the£26.8 million, if I remember my figures correctly, in the PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis. Noble Lords will know, because I have briefed those on the Front Benches, that we have been doing some additional work. We discussed this with the Law Society and the Bar Council to describe how we thought that the figures would need to change in an upward fashion. Our analysis is that something like £38 million or£39 million is required, with a built-in contingency. Noble Lords will also know that the Law Society and Bar Council raised particular concerns about VAT. With the absolute support of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, I have undertaken to take those figures away and look again. Before we get to the point of discussing costs on day 3 of Report, my ambition is to be able to come forward with definitive figures for your Lordships to discuss properly. I did not want anyone to be in any doubt about that.