Legal Services Bill [Lords]

The hon. Gentleman will see in the Bill the list of activities for which, if undertaken by a trade union official, there should be no regulation. Yet if a person from a citizens advice bureau did one of those activities, the situation would be different. There are tribunals where trade union officials appear, but of course he is right that not every tribunal would allow that to happen. I do not see why members of a trade union should not have the protection that the Bill would give someone from the citizens advice bureau or a law centre doing the same work. We can pursue the subject further in Committee, but that position seems to be all of a piece with the exemption that applied to trade unions as regards their activities as claims handlers. My view on that is that what is good for one group of people doing a particular job should be good for all groups that do that job. At the moment, legal complaints are handled in-house by the Law Society. A claimant who is dissatisfied can go to the legal services ombudsman, who can ask that the complaint be looked at again. There has been some suggestion that criticisms of the way in which barristers deal with complaints are on a par with criticisms as regards solicitors, and that simply is not so. The ombudsman has regularly praised the Bar for the way in which it deals with such cases, and has said:"““I can report I have seen an increase in the percentage of Bar Council investigations I was satisfied with, up…to 88 per cent. this year. I welcome this improved performance.””" She praised the ““excellent progress made”” on the speed of handling cases, and said, on transparency,"““I have found the Bar Council to work in a very open and co-operative manner.””" As I am sure that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird), would acknowledge, if there are disciplinary proceedings against a barrister, there is nearly always a conduct case, and in those cases it helps if the people carrying out the examination are skilled at cross-examination and at finding out what really happened. As I have said, when I discussed the subject with Which? some time ago, it acknowledged that the way in which the Bar dealt with such cases was very good.