Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken. In Committee, we had a very useful and important series of debates on issues that were clearly of great importance to your Lordships. I share the concern. We talked a lot about rural communities in the context of previous experiences, and mentioned the corner shop and the post office. My noble friend alluded to the fact that Part 5 might provide opportunities for small practices to expand to enable them to survive more effectively in rural communities. That is certainly our ambition. We have also talked a lot about access to justice. We will, I hope, consider that more fully when we discuss later amendments. Monitoring is also very important. As the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen, said, he has tabled an important amendment relating to monitoring. I shall focus entirely on the effect of removingPart 5, which the amendment seeks to do. I shall not pretend that I am not disappointed to see that the amendment has returned, because one of the important aspects of our deliberations in Committee was, I felt, that noble Lords were trying to improve, rather than remove, Part 5. We talked at enormous length about the opportunities that Part 5 could give to providers and consumers and I thought that some noble Lords felt that we should encourage that as long as—this is critical—the appropriate safeguards were in place. The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, is entirely right that my noble friend Lord Whitty shared his concerns about ensuring that those safeguards were in place. My ambition is therefore that we should discuss those safeguards and take note of the way in which the Government have sought to address them. That will enable me to explain what we have sought to do and noble Lords to move their amendments and to have that very important debate. If we remove Part 5, we do not prohibit alternative business structures. We inhibit their development, for sure, but we do so without establishing the important system of regulatory safeguards in the legislation to ensure that this develops properly. Noble Lords know that limited forms of alternative business structure practice will be able to continue to develop under the existing framework. Section 66 of the Courts and Legal Services Act makes it clear that nothing in the Solicitors Acts, the Notaries Acts or common law prevented solicitors, notaries or barristers from entering into unincorporated associations with other people or restricted the circumstances in which they might do so. Current protections are not enough. It is right and proper to develop alternative business structures, but it must be done within a proper regulatory framework to ensure that we have competition and greater innovation to the benefit not only of the consumer but of the legal services sector. We want to do that in a structured way that enables us to protect the consumer and the legal profession. We know that a healthy supplier base is absolutely essential to the provision of legal services and to achieving the objective of improving access to justice. We also know that many legal professionals do not fear competition: quite the opposite. There are tools in Part 5 that will enable them to respond to changes in legal services and the business environment and to competition from new entrants into the market. They can use them to provide even better services to clients, which is at the heart of what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said he wished to achieve. I know that he wants to ensure that the quality of service provided to clients is of the highest order and the right calibre, hence the rather gloomy picture that he paints. I understand why he does not want the legal profession to lose face-to-face contact and the ability to talk to the client to give the best advice and to have that replaced by some remote structure, which he described by alluding to the call centre experience that he has had. We want to achieve nothing other than a better quality of legal service. We do not want to do anything that will prevent rural communities from getting the best possible services. I do not think that the noble Lord intends this, but removing Part 5 could stifle innovation and prevent change. We believe that there is quite a lot of welcome, cautious though it may well be in part, for what might be achieved through alternative business structures to ensure a higher quality of services, a strong and vibrant legal profession, and good advice and support to consumers. I therefore hope that the noble Lord will allowPart 5 to remain on the basis that noble Lords have quite reasonably wished to ensure that we have the right safeguards in place. I very much look forward to debating those later in our consideration of the Bill.