Legal Services Bill [Lords]

First, I should like to declare my entry in the Register of Members' Interests as a qualified, but non-practising, barrister. We are going to be pushed to get through this programme, because there are some 125 amendments and new clauses to get through. I worked out that if there are a few Divisions, we will devote about one and a half minutes to each amendment or new clause. That does not leave us much time, so we must make as much progress as possible, although that will not be easy, because the Government have come up with a lot of extremely complicated amendments. The essence of new clause 2 relates to clause 35, which covers public censure and states that"““if the Board is satisfied—""(a) that an act or omission of an approved regulator…has had, or is likely to have, an adverse impact on one or more of the regulatory objectives, and""(b) that, in all the circumstances of the case, it is appropriate to act under this section.""(2) The Board may publish a statement censuring the approved regulator for the act or omission””." Any publication of a censure against an approved regulator could have wide-ranging and far-reaching consequences for it. Let us consider the example of the Bar Standards Board, which was set up fairly recently to act as an arms-length regulator within the Bar, has done a first-class job of dealing with complaints and has built up a good reputation in a short time. If that approved regulator were censured, its reputation could be demolished overnight. Surely it needs and deserves some form of appeal, and that is what new clause 2 proposes; it would give an appeal against the public censure. Clause 37 and the part of the Bill that gives the legal services board the scope for imposing a financial penalty contain a clear mechanism for appeal. There is no logic in not having a proper right of appeal when it comes to public censure. It may well be that such censure is well deserved and correct, but given the damage that it can do, surely there should be some right of appeal. Our new clause would provide that, and I recommend it to the House. I hope that the Minister will tell us that she supports the principle of having this right of appeal. Amendment No. 1 might state the obvious, but it was suggested by the Law Society. Our existing regulatory system has withstood the passage of time over a substantial period, and I should point out one of its great strengths. It engenders a strong ethos of professionalism, which is respected by the vast majority of lawyers. Clause 1(1) does not mention avoiding a conflict of interest, and that is an odd omission.