Legal Services Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 316: 316: After Clause 107, insert the following new Clause— ““Monitoring and research (1) The Lord Chancellor shall, in accordance with the provisions of this section, provide for the carrying out of a study into the operation of this Part. (2) The Lord Chancellor shall make such preparations for the study to begin as soon as regulations bringing this Part into force are produced, and such preparations may relate to the instruction of a research team and formation of a Research Advisor Group to assist in the direction of the study. (3) Within three years of the date on which this Part comes into force, the Lord Chancellor shall lay before Parliament a report on the results of the study.? The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am very grateful to the Ministers for sharing their thoughts behind Amendment No. 317. It might be convenient for the House if we considered Amendments Nos. 316 and 317 together, because undoubtedly the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Temple Guiting, sees AmendmentNo. 317 as a better alternative to Amendment No. 316. I concede that Amendment No. 317 sets it out clearly that the board’s annual report will have to deal with the activities of licensing authorities and licensed bodies and the way in which those activities have affected the regulatory objectives. It applies, of course, not to the first annual report but to subsequent reports. The noble Lord, Lord Evans of Temple Guiting, may recall that I gave an example in Committee of the whole procedure of personal injury compensation to which the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, referred. The Government introduced the conditional fee agreements, which became known as ““no win, no fee?, against a background of no real research. It soon became clear that things were beginning to go wrong. We saw that with the television advertisements that suggested, ““Where there is blame, there is a claim, and it will not cost you a penny?, and with the rise of Claims Direct, the Accident Group and Tag. I told the previous Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, on several occasions that some careful studies should have been made before the step into the unknown was taken. I understood at the time that it was because of Treasury pressure on budgets. The budget was no longer there, so civil legal aid had to be dramatically cut, and the subsequently named Department for Constitutional Affairs thought that ““no win, no fee? agreements were the only way forward. I give that as an example because it is very similar to the situation now. The whole procedure involved in setting into being this new structure is, to some extent, a step into the unknown. I well understand the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, saying that we should take it all out of the Bill, because there is no doubt that there are fears and concerns about what this new system will do, particularly in certain respects. My argument, however, is linked much more to Sir David Clementi’s report, because the review set out a procedure that envisaged a step-by-step approach towards LDPs, and rather rejected the idea of multi-disciplinary practices as a necessary concomitant, further progression of the notion of these new structures. We are therefore going between Sir David Clementi and the unknown, and we do not know what will happen. This is why the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, who is introducing this policy, rather than the board should make preparations for the study to be commenced as soon as regulations bringing this part into force are produced. Then let us have a proper debate about it before we move to the next stage. I realise that this falls foul of the Government’s intention to move with one bound to free the structures in a dramatic way. Their alternative may deal with the problem in subsequent years, but I would like at the outset to have a careful study into what will happen. I beg to move.