Legal Services Bill [Lords]

I shall keep practising; if I work hard enough, I might even end up with a west country accent. I understand the sentiment behind the hon. Gentleman's amendment No. 144. It is important that the board should have regard to the principle of best regulatory practice in all that it does; I cannot see why anyone would resile from that. That is why we have clearly set out in clause 3(3) that the board, as the hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out,"““must have regard to…the principles under which regulatory activities should be transparent, accountable, proportionate, consistent and targeted only at cases in which action is needed, and any other principle appearing to it to represent the best regulatory practice.””" However, as the hon. Gentleman also pointed out, those same principles are already set out in section 2 of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, so I consider it unnecessary to duplicate the provision in the Bill. I turn to amendment No. 83, a minor amendment to ensure that the board is not prevented from exercising its functions for the purpose of ensuring that the exercise of an approved regulator's regulatory functions is not prejudiced by its representative functions or that the decision relating to the exercise of an approved regulator's regulatory functions is taken independently from the representative ones. I do not know whether anyone can understand that gobbledegook; I hope that Hansard will be able to translate it into normal English. In the past, both things had to apply; amendment No. 83 would effect a minor change so that the board would not be prevented from exercising its functions in that way. Amendments Nos. 10, 11 and 12 ask for the seven-day requirement. The Bill already provides for a 28-day period before which the board can take action, and I do not believe that an additional seven days would achieve anything. It is also important that the board and approved regulators should remain in close contact throughout the period; the board, of course, is under a duty to be transparent. The approved regulator will be able to challenge the board, but obviously the board must be able to act swiftly and appropriately. When considering amendments Nos. 11 and 12, it is important that we remember that an appeal is available. Amendment No. 11 would simply duplicate the appeals process, which could ultimately waste valuable time and resources to arrive at what would inevitably be the same conclusion. The current provisions do not prevent the case from proceeding to the Court of Appeal, in the event that that is appropriate. Amendment No. 12 would remove an important provision and could produce the unwelcome effect of allowing for the possibility of two separate challenges being brought by the same applicant against the same decision on essentially the same grounds. On amendment No. 66, it is clearly right that the board should act only where an approved regulator is ““clearly failing””. However, that is a very imprecise term that does not translate well into legislation. There is the potential for creating confusion and contradicting the thresholds that already apply to the exercise of the board's regulatory powers. Instead, I believe that the combination of the existing thresholds, the clause 3 duties and the amended clause 49 provisions should ensure that the board exercises its powers only where it is right to do so. I continue to believe that the Bill as currently drafted properly addresses all the concerns that hon. Members have raised. Government amendment No. 84 will put it beyond doubt, in the Bill, that the legal services board may, if acting as an approved regulator and if set out in an order modifying the board's functions, provide the people whom it regulates with an appeal to the High Court against any decision that it makes. The effect of the amendment is that those bodies whose functions are modified under section 69 or paragraph 2 of schedule 22 can also receive a similar power. For those reasons, I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendments and ask the House to approve amendments Nos. 83 and 84.