Legal Services Bill [Lords]

I agree absolutely. Many people in areas such as the one that I represent want as little as possible to do with solicitors. They do not know how to complain and they do not believe that they will get value for money, so they avoid solicitors. The one time when the great majority have some association with the legal profession is, of course, when they buy a house. I shall not bore the House by repeating the litany of complaints that I have heard about the service that people have had from solicitors carrying out conveyancing on their houses. I am sure that other hon. Members have had similar experiences. I would summarise the complaints by saying that they relate to slowness, lack of response to telephone calls, and indifference to the stress of purchasing a house and to the implications of slowness on the part of the legal profession. I am the first to accept that there are many dedicated solicitors who take a professional approach, but overall the perception is that there is a culture within the profession that is not responsive or accountable. There has been a lot of debate about the independence of the legal services board. Other key regulatory organisations—the Financial Services Authority and the Office of Fair Trading, among others—have independent chairmen appointed by the Lord Chancellor or by other members of the Government. The funny thing is that when the appointment is made, the debate is always about whether the chairman will be independent, but once the person is appointed, the nature of the debate usually changes. We start hearing people complain, ““Why don’t the Government interfere in the decisions being taken by that independent organisation?”” That is a reflection of the fact that the process is legitimate, robust and can be trusted. I shall talk briefly about whether regulation should be light-touch or heavy-handed. In an ideal world, we would want light-touch regulation, and that is appropriate when there are regulatory organisations that function appropriately. However, if they are not functioning appropriately, light-touch regulation is no good. There has to be the capacity to be more intrusive if the regulatory bodies do not deliver according to their purpose. Although I certainly subscribe to the principle that regulation should be light-touch, it must also be appropriate. I hope that when the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Lewisham, East (Bridget Prentice), devises the regulations, there will be a process to make sure that the level of regulation is appropriate to the effectiveness of the organisation being regulated. Another issue to consider is cost, which in turn is affected by competition. That brings me on to the so-called alternative business structures. I have never understood why only lawyers can employ other lawyers; that strikes me as the ultimate in restrictive practices. To take up and extend a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones), if that practice was applied in other contexts—for example, in relation to trade unions—there would be a reaction against it. It is quite possible for single practices, or groups of practices, comprising excellent lawyers to have a deficient business organisation. A practice that delivers a very good legal service might carry out that service in a far more cost-effective manner if it were organised differently and were subject to more business discipline—and that way, it would get far more public support. I have listened to the objections to the alternative business structures, and they fall into a number of categories. One objection is that companies will cherry-pick cases. Looking back to the Carter review, and issues to do with the cost of legal aid, the argument for extending funding for legal aid, and against some of the Carter proposals, was that companies were cherry-picking and were no longer providing legal aid, and legal aid deserts were being created. These issues are by no means new. I would argue that opening up the profession to competition from other organisations will force companies to look again at their business practices and to deliver a service more effectively and cheaply, thereby possibly making legal aid more profitable. Of course, that would enable other organisations with tried and tested business practices to use them to deliver the same service more cheaply. The point needs to be made that there are organisations, such as those in the co-operative movement, that have found a market niche through ethical trading and targeting communities that have hitherto been marginalised or excluded. If those organisations took part in providing legal services, it is hardly likely that they would adopt the practices that some hon. Members have criticised. I agree that the change will have to be monitored. Obviously, whenever a market is opened up competitive advantages arise, but there is scope for abuse too, and there must be a monitoring process that ensures that we benefit from competition and do not lose out. However, on balance, I think that the change will be a force for good. It will act as a business discipline on a range of solicitors and lawyers who have hitherto never had to consider the issues that we are discussing. Another objection concerns the conflict of interest between shareholder return and quality legal services. I do not understand how anybody working for a big corporation could have a more direct interest in enhancing shareholder value than a lawyer working on his or her own, or in a partnership, in terms of the profitability of the company. There is a far greater relationship between profitability and the individual for lawyers working on their own, or in a partnership, than there is for lawyers who work for a large organisation, which may be a public limited company. Under the current framework, there is far more incentive for individuals to maximise their profit at the expense of quality legal services. I conclude by acknowledging the contribution that many good lawyers make, and I accept that many members of the profession are dedicated to the public good and work for a relatively low income on behalf of the public. However, there is a culture that prevails in the profession that is at odds with that dedication, and it fails to project the real value that some solicitors bring. The Bill, by enhancing the complaints procedure and reinforcing trust in the profession, will go an enormous way towards dealing with that. It should not only create more confidence, but enable more people to access legal services. As is the case with alternative business structures, legal services could well be provided by organisations that are skilled in developing markets, and which have access to constituencies that solicitors currently do not provide for. There is a real prospect that more people, with greater confidence in the profession, will use those services. If they do, they will enhance the industry, not just for themselves, but for the whole profession. When a complaints procedure that reinforces public confidence is combined with a business structure that gives people more options when selecting who provides their legal services, there will ultimately be a positive impact on the profession, and on the public.