Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, said about Part 5. We have serious concerns about the impact that the licensing provisions may have on the provision of legal services in rural areas and in many large industrial towns. That is why we place great weight on Amendment No. 252, which would ensure that when the approved regulators—and, where appropriate, the LSB—address the issue of licensing, they give significant weight, as the planning legislation sometimes says, to the access to justice objective. In all other respects, I am aware that the noble Baroness has sought to emphasise that the question of weighting is entirely a matter for the Legal Services Board, but I believe this to be a vital exception. That is particularly true in the provision of external capital to legal services. It would not be surprising if, at the end of the operational year, the investor had a careful look at the profitability of the various types of legal activity in which the firm in which it had invested engages. If it finds that some activities are more profitable than others, it will inevitably require the firm to put more resources into those areas in future. The kind of services vital to rural areas and large industrial towns are often those provided to the less well-off consumer. If a large number of legal firms attract outside capital, the predictions made by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, are likely to come true. I recall that, in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, who has not always been on my side in our debates, expressed some hesitation about the absence of special access to justice provision in this part. I do not know whether that will mean that he will go as far as supporting Amendment No. 252, but he is clearly thinking very hard about what is the appropriate government approach. Although the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen, has not intervened at this juncture, the noble Baroness will doubtless be aware that he has tabled, at the end of the Bill, what might be described in effect as a sunrise clause. In that context, the noble Baroness will recall the long debate that we had about the importance of monitoring ABSs in their early phases to see whether their effect is as beneficial as the Government predict. She will not be surprised to hear that we believe that some sort of legislative cocktail involving our Amendment No. 252 and the sunrise clause amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen, is the right approach to Part 5. The uncertainties are great. I hope that the noble Baroness will not underestimate some of the graphic illustration in the predictions of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew; if only some of those predictions come true, the government experiment will prove a disastrous failure. In principle, after careful consideration, we are not inclined to expunge Part 5, provided that either some combination of our amendment and that of the noble Lord, Lord Neill, is accepted or the Government come up with an equivalent solution.