Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, of course it would. I wrote on 22 March and I have a copy of the letter here. I apologise to the noble Lord if he has not seen it and I shall investigate why that is so. As a result, he cannot possibly anticipate what I am going to say. I will make sure that the noble Lord sees the letter by tomorrow. I remember signing the letter, so it certainly left me, even if it did not arrive with the noble Lord. Our legal advice is that the difficulty with removing the ““reasonably practicable”” qualification is that the first limb, paragraph (a), would impose an absolute requirement on the board to act in a way that is compatible with all the regulatory objectives in respect of every regulatory decision that it took. The second limb, paragraph (b), would impose an absolute requirement on the board to act in a way that it considered was most appropriate for meeting all those objectives in respect of all of its decisions. From noble Lords’ comments on the purpose of the amendment, I do not believe that that is what they seek; however, parliamentary counsel tells me that that would be the effect of the amendment. I think that we are all agreed on the ability of the board to look at the objectives, to weigh them up and to use the ““reasonably practicable”” qualification in that context. The clause is not saying what I think the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, fears it says—that if you cannot make the regulative objectives work in this context you can do something else; in other words, if they are not reasonably practicable you can behave in a manner outside their scope. I am reliably informed that the clause as constructed would not enable that. The clause says that you have to operate within regulatory objectives but you can weigh up what you are doing; you have to look at the context of the objectives and consider what the board does to ensure that they are met. As we have discussed in the context of Clause 1, that will mean that you can balance the objectives depending on the decision you are making and act accordingly. That was, in a sense, the alternative proposal to creating a hierarchy by attaching a different weight to different objectives when making particular decisions. That was the advice that I received. I had sought it at length, because I made a commitment to do so. It suggests that the noble Lord need not worry about enabling the board to operate outside the objectives. Those fears are unfounded; it cannot do that. The board, while operating within the objectives, must balance those objectives appropriately, as noble Lords seek. I reject the amendment because it does not work in practice; it prevents the board from balancing the objectives effectively. We all agree that we want the board to be able to balance the objectives on a case-by-case basis, depending on the decision. According to parliamentary counsel and the legal advice I have received, the clause does not achieve what the noble Lord fears—enabling the Legal Services Board to operate outside the objectives.