Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, the Minister has replied helpfully in her customarily persuasive and courteous way, but I am afraid that we feel totally unpersuaded by what she has said. There is already a competitive market. We fear that the competition in that market will be removed. There is nothing that good lawyers like less than seeing legal work done badly. We believe that, despite the safeguards that are set out in the Bill and in the schedules, and indeed in the amendments that have been so helpfully tabled by some of those who have spoken eloquently in this short debate, we will be left with a situation in which the quality of legal services will diminish. The Minister spoke of the existing possibilities of lawyers entering into unincorporated associations with one another. That is certainly possible now, but it is a very different professional picture from one in which there are very large incorporated organisations with a very large profit element to them. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, who spoke constructively to this amendment, that flexibility already exists, but the evidence is that what has been produced is not that good. In the very large-scale market in personal injury cases, for example, we have seen more litigation with less merit. We have seen a significant degree of corporate fraud in the way in which cases have been obtained by corporate vehicles that have placed themselves in that market. Those of us who have been in the profession for a long time have also seen the unseemly picture of commercial organisations persuading people who have been injured in accidents to go to them, but then selling the cases, at a fee per case, to solicitors who then conduct them. I do not understand how that improves the competitive environment for consumers. We on these Benches therefore feel intense disappointment that Part 5 remains so unmitigated in the Bill. Accordingly, we wish to test the opinion of the House. On Question, Whether the said amendment(No. 202) shall be agreed to? Their Lordships divided: Contents, 48; Not-Contents, 116.