Legal Services Bill [Lords]

The Minister is right; they are separate points. Of course, there is discretion, which remains right. The question is whether the set-up costs and the ongoing costs should be met at all from the public purse, or only from the two sources that she talked about. We need to have that debate, so that there can be confidence that the costs fall in the right place. My last point about the LSB remains slightly unresolved after various specific debates in the Lords. What rights of appeal will exist against the LSB’s decisions? On reserve legal activities, there is a question about will writing. I do not suggest that everyone needs to employ a lawyer to write a will. People increasingly go to the shop down the road and get a ““write your own will”” pack. However, if people employ someone to write their wills, they need to make sure nowadays that they employ someone who is competent, and we need to consider that profession as well. I have dealt with the legal complaints issue. One door is the right place. There should be the ability to delegate the powers to investigate, but the legal complaints system should be able to look after that. Independence from the profession is needed. Such things might have been done well or badly. Solicitors have received many more complaints than the Bar, but they are much bigger profession. We certainly need a system that works better and more quickly, in the interests of the professions, as well as consumers who have often received a bad service. The really controversial issue is the business structures proposal. Logically—I will pick up the challenge—Liberals will say, ““Fine. Free market. There should be absolutely open competition.”” But we do not do that in many other areas of life. Why? Because we know what happens. This is like the postal service debate. If we had a free market for the postal service, the people who would undercut the costs in urban areas would not be willing to deliver to the islands and highlands of the country. So we must have a service that ensures that access to justice is as readily and easily available to people in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) who live in villages and towns in rural Somerset or those who live in the villages and towns of north Wales referred to by my noble Friend Lord Thomas of Gresford as it is in the capital city of our country, part of which I have the privilege to represent. There is a real concern that, if we just go down the road that the Government propose, we will produce the sort of cut-throat competition that not only has the advantage of bringing professions together, but that means, bluntly, that the big boys—the big commercial companies, whose interest is principally in something else—come in, undermine and kill off the people who have local competent experience. In many places in the country—let us take a small city such as Hereford, where the issues are often to do with flooding and land drainage—there is a lot of tradition and understanding of exactly the issues. That would not be known by someone in the headquarters of a multinational company, which has a principal interest not in legal issues in rural counties in England, but in something else. Therefore, the Liberal Democrats are absolutely clear that the sunrise protection—having a proper check and an investigation—is the least that should happen before we open up the profession to full competition.