Legal Services Bill [Lords]

I should like to make progress, and I hope to conclude shortly. The Law Society's president made it quite clear that the society supports the Bill's basic principles. All the key issues, including the separation of regulation from the representational role, have been accepted by the Bar Council. It is sensible to operate a system in which the regulator works in partnership with the profession. Nobody takes issue with that. I think the Minister has understood that, which is why I echo the comments of my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), who say that we hope she will be able to flesh out to us how that can be dealt with constructively. The second point that I wanted to make briefly relates to judicial review. With all due respect, nobody should be above the law. The system of judicial review ensures that. That applies to a body such as the legal services board as much as to anyone else. It is only common sense that judicial review should remain. The reference in the amendment to a statement being ““manifestly unreasonable”” is very close to the well-known Wednesbury test of reasonableness. Many of us think it is not unreasonable to give an opportunity of redress, should there ever be—maybe there never will be—a manifestly perverse decision on the part of any regulatory body. I hope that that will be borne in mind, just as I hope that when Labour Members question the willingness of the legal profession to tackle issues for itself, they will bear in mind the report from the Bar Standards Board for this year, which was published after our Committee discussions. The board pointed out that not only had there been a significant increase in the number of cases referred to disciplinary tribunals, which have a greater independent element than the summary procedure, but interestingly, although the numbers always remain very small, the proportionate increase in the number of cases where complaints were upheld by the Bar Standards Board, acting independently on behalf of the profession, increased to over 82 per cent. That is better than any prosecuting authority usually achieves. Before people criticise the professions for not being prepared to set their own house in order, they ought to bear that in mind. That indicates that what is sensible is a light touch rather than a heavy-handed one, and an approach that does not seek to second-guess the outcome. I hope the Minister can deal with my final point. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome made sensible points about the risk of conflict of interests. Given that we will later consider alternative business structures, as my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) said, we are likely to see more and more instances where there may properly be mixtures of competences in firms, and various Chinese walls. I do not have a problem with a greater number of alternative business structures, but that makes it all the more necessary that the conflict of interest point should be dealt with and spelled out as clearly as possible in the Bill.