Legal Services Bill [HL]

moved AmendmentNo. 632ZA: 632ZA: Clause 197, page 109, line 5, after ““person”” insert ““providing services to clients, directly or indirectly,”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, I make no apology for returning to this subject, which we dealt with on the last day in Committee. I do so because I believe there is a growing consensus across parties and the professions that we really need to get the approach to Part 5 right. One of the problems is that Part 5 fails to deal with the new structures on a risk-based approach, something I know Sir David Clementi was keen to see and to which the Government signed up when they accepted the Hampton principles in March 2005. When we last debated the issue, the Minister summarised the problem as she saw it in the following terms: "““A body either has non-lawyers in positions of control or it does not. Consequently, it is either a licensable body or it is not””.—[Official Report, 18/4/07; col. 301.]" That approach fails to recognise the point of difference between legal disciplinary practices and multidisciplinary practices which Sir David Clementi said was at the heart of his review. The most important point here is that legal disciplinary practices are low risk—I refer to LDPs as defined by Sir David Clementi—and the concerns that they should fall outside Part 5 could be addressed quite simply by introducing new clauses to require fitness to own or registration of non-lawyer principals without burdening such practices with the full difficulties arising from the legislative requirements of Part 5. This amendment seeks to remove that artificial distinction and allow legal disciplinary practices with non-client-facing managers to develop and grow, which I believe would drive up the efficiency of legal services providers and enable them to attract and retain the best talent. I beg to move.