Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, my ambition is that the Legal Services Board will never have to use its powers. The difficulty is that when one sets up in legislation a system that enables action to be taken when things go wrong, the implication or assumption is that the relationship will be a negative one. Our ambitions are more positive. We have talked about partnership, a light touch and how we expect the regulator to operate in an overarching and not an overbearing way. On that I think we are all agreed. Where the board might find itself having to use these powers, we are also all agreed that they should be used appropriately, expediently and efficiently. They should not be used in any inappropriate way, and that is why we have laid out in Clauses 30 to 34 what the powers are, how they are to be used and so forth, and why in Clause 48 we have enabled the board to produce policy statements about its powers and other matters. It is also why in Clause 3 we have said that the board must act within the best regulatory practice. We believe that the objective sought by noble Lords, particularly in the example given by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, of medical negligence cases, would be covered by the combination of regulatory objectives and the way in which the board will operate. The noble Lord gave a good example of where I would not expect the board to use its power. The question is whether there could be circumstances where problems had arisen with one of the objectives and it was felt that action should be taken. The difficulty with the amendment is that it would mean, in effect, that the board would have to look at all the objectives to see whether they, too, were being—I use the word advisedly—flouted. I cite as an example access to justice, an extremely important issue that we have debated and will continue to debate on Report. There could be an issue on which the board felt it had to act but that, on the basis of this amendment, it could not act because the other regulatory objectives were not being damaged. That would hinder the operation of the board in a way that I do not think noble Lords want. The adjective ““significant? was proposed, although the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, said that other adjectives could be used. Again, the difficulty for the board is that the word ““significant? when considered from the legal perspective—noble Lords know that I am not a lawyer but I do take legal advice—could hinder the board from operating. For example, if the board were working with a small regulator, could a case where only very few people were affected, albeit extremely adversely, be considered significant? Ultimately it would be for the courts to decide, but from the perspective of this legislation, we do not want to put the board in a position where it feels disempowered to act because of the word ““significant?. However, we believe that the objectives sought by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, in this amendment are already achieved in the Bill. Noble Lords are right to want to ensure that the board operates properly, that it considers carefully what is happening and why, that it does not take inappropriate action, is light touch in its operations and conforms to good regulatory practice. All that is already set out in the Bill therefore there is nothing between us in terms of what is required.