Legal Services Bill [Lords]

I was a member of the Joint Committee on the draft Bill, and I declare an interest as a non-practising solicitor. I have been non-practising for 10 years now, so I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) will not be too hard on me as one of the lawyers whom he is attacking. I give great credit to my hon. Friends the Members for Bassetlaw and for North Durham (Mr. Jones) for being so persistent about a lay chair for the legal services board. I congratulate them on what appears to have been their successful conversion of the Government to their cause. I also want to congratulate the Minister. The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) mentioned that she has taken care to listen to all points of view and has carefully considered all the arguments. She has been very deliberate in her decision to propose her amendment on the consultation between the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice. I will support her final judgment, because I appreciate the care that she has taken in coming to that decision. I want to say briefly why I support both proposals. First, on the lay chair of the legal services board, clearly the board will comprise a number of lawyers and non-lawyers. It is important that it has a lay chair, because the crunch decision will come one day when the legal services board explains why it has not decided to intervene in a crisis that involves legal services. The person whom the whole country will see on television screens, hear reported on the radio and see reported in the newspapers will be the chair of the legal services board. Public confidence will be maintained if no one says that the board decided not to intervene because that person was a lawyer and that, ““They're all the same, these lawyers; they stick together.”” That is a matter of public interest, which is also a regulatory objective in the Bill. As for consulting the Lord Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham mocked the official Opposition for being behind the rest of us and stuck with the vested interests of lawyers in opposing the consultation provision and in seeking the concurrence provision. The official Opposition are in a worse position than he suggests. In fact, they have been left behind by everyone else. The solicitors' representative body, the Law Society, now supports the Government amendment. The representative body of the Bar, the Bar Council, and the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys now support the provision. Clearly, Which? supports it.