Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord who, as he has indicated, returns to an issue that we debated in Committee. The amendments would work in a way in which we would end up with a hybrid between the present Legal Services Complaints Commissioner and the proposal in the Bill in relation to the LSB and the improved regulators. Having looked again at the provisions in the Bill, as I said I would do, I believe that we have satisfactory arrangements to make sure that the board has the appropriate range of controls over the OLC. I will demonstrate this in six key ways. First are the overall arrangements in Part 6 which provide for the OLC to operate through a series of rules which, in Clause 152, must receive the consent of the LSB before they can take affect. The LSB will have complete oversight of the way in which the OLC’s rules are framed and, provided they are adhered to, how the OLC operates. Additionally, in Clause 153, the board may amend or modify any of those rules if it considers that they are deficient. Secondly, in Clause 115, the OLC is accountable through its annual report to the LSB, which must deal with any matter that the board has directed. For example, they may have to show how they have dealt with the speed with which complaints are resolved. Of course, the OLC has a separate annual report to the LSB because it has a distinct function and its status is as a distinct non-departmental public body. The LSB will present both its annual report and the OLC’s annual report to the Secretary of State, who will lay them before Parliament. This will reflect the fact that the OLC reports to the LSB. Thirdly, Clause 117 allows the board to require the Office for Legal Complaints to prepare a report on any matter relating to its functions. This might include, for example, a strategic plan for how it proposes to remedy a particular failure to meet a performance target. Fourthly, the power to set performance targets in Clause 118 allows the board to impose conditions on how those targets are met and, crucially, to monitor performance against targets. This will allow the LSB to monitor systematically how complaints are being handled. Fifthly, the LSB’s ultimate power in relation to the Office for Legal Complaints is at Schedule 15(8)(b). As the noble Lord has said, this allows the board the power to remove members of the OLC. The noble Lord described this as, perhaps, a ““sledgehammer to crack a nut””, but it is important as the ultimate power, only to be used on members of the OLC where there is obviously a significant failure in the discharge of their duties. Finally, in addition to the above statutory powers, as a non-departmental public body, the Office for Legal Complaints will be accountable to Parliament for the efficient use of resources and the discharge of its statutory responsibilities in a way that the current complaints-handling and regulatory bodies are not. We consider that, taken together, these six key points provide an appropriate and effective control over the Office for Legal Complaints and the way it operates, intentionally different from those the board has in relation to approved regulators, designed specifically to govern the relationship between two distinct non-departmental public bodies with different functions, but with the OLC being subordinate to the LSB. On that basis, I hope the noble Lord can withdraw his amendment.