Legal Services Bill [Lords]

First, may I welcome the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) to his responsibilities? I think that we breathed a collective sigh of relief on seeing that the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) is not here tonight, and that we might get the entire Bill dealt with this evening. The Minister has made it clear, as have my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) and I, that putting the consumer at the heart of the Bill is key. Hon. Members might not be surprised to hear that I agree with my hon. Friend when he says that we are talking about an attempt to treat the legal profession differently from any other bodies. The measures that we put in place under the Bill should not amount to less than those that were in place in the old system, in which there was a legal services ombudsman who had tough powers of regulation and who could impose fines. Under that system, there was no right of appeal. The legal services ombudsman conducted a tough investigation on miners' compensation, and I believe that lawyers would certainly have appealed the report. It was not the fact that it was inaccurate—it was the fact that it was tough and critical of the way in which the legal profession preyed on many of my constituents and other people in receipt of miners' compensation. I must disagree with the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome about the grounds for appeal. New clause 2 says that one such reason is the fact that publication would be ““manifestly unreasonable or inappropriate””. When the legal services ombudsman produced her report, many lawyers could have argued that its contents were unreasonable or inappropriate. That would be the case for someone on the receiving end of a hard, tough report.