Legal Services Bill [Lords]

They certainly do. Watson Burton’s defence in Newcastle’s The Journal last week was that it had a ““legal obligation”” to pass the money over to the other side—P and R Associates. That is part of my earlier point about education: we need education on this subject. The legal services board must be seen to be independent, and it must be independent from the legal profession. I also welcome the creation of the consumer panel to ensure that the administration of consumer services is properly conducted. It is important that the Minister—in her opening remarks today and in her continuing rhetoric—says that the consumer must be at the heart of the matter. If that upsets the legal profession—tough. From my experience of the way in which it has handled many cases in my constituency, frankly, it does not give a damn. It has created much hardship and heartache for many individuals. I turn to one final issue: the alternative business model. I welcome it, because I recognise that there are other ways of delivering legal services. However, although I, like my hon. Friend, will not oppose the provision, I think that we should tread very carefully to ensure that we do not maintain the vested interests of the legal profession, about which we have heard tonight. If high street solicitors go out of business—good. In my experience, they provide a second-rate and substandard service, and do not do what the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey says they do, and refer cases that they are not capable of dealing with. They do not do that; they take those cases on, give the impression that they know what they are talking about, and give people a substandard service. However, we need to tread very carefully. We do not want the same situation as we had with the growth of claims handlers, with middlemen and spivs setting up organisations that claim to be solicitors when they clearly are not. I emphasise that if we have alternative business models, the individual consumer must be clear about who is legally qualified to give advice. In the cases that my hon. Friend and I have dealt with, claims-handling companies have knocked on people’s doors and rung people up. If we ask people, ““Are they solicitors?””, they say, ““Yes, they are.”” But if we look at their literature, does it say that they are solicitors? No, it does not. They use language that suggests that they could be legally qualified, when most of them are not. In the worst case that I have come across, their previous company sold double glazing. With that caveat, if the alternative business model is properly set up, with organisations that my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, West mentioned, such as the Co-op and others, it could provide added service to the consumer. However, we must tread carefully to ensure that it is clear to the consumer who is, and who is not, legally qualified to give advice. I shall finish where I started, and say that I welcome the Bill. It is a great move forward in trying to give legal protection to some of the most vulnerable people in our society. The Law Society has blown hot and cold on the issue, however. I read the Hansard report of the evidence from the other place, in which Fiona Wolfe said that the Bill had been much improved, but it has not; it has been filleted. This is where the Law Society needs to come clean and say that the miners’ compensation scheme has clearly demonstrated that huge numbers of its members have taken advantage of the poor and weak in society—but in many cases, the Law Society has stood by and done very little. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw has argued, the Law Society should argue for more robust controls over those rogue solicitors—the rotten apples in the barrel. Unfortunately, there are far too many, and I do not accept Fiona Wolfe’s point that only a minority have become involved in the feeding frenzy. If the society did that, it would be doing a service to the consumer, and to its genuine members. Its attempts to weaken the Bill by lobbying in the other place for its vested interests has not brought it any credit. Like my hon. Friend, I offer my services in Committee. I do not know whether I shall be chosen, but I would certainly enjoy some of the exchanges. I would also table some amendments that would not only improve the Bill, but make it more effective at protecting the weak and vulnerable who need to be protected from certain sections of the legal profession.