Legal Services Bill [Lords]

Is another Bill coming up? I am always available to serve the House, as required. When I entered my office this morning, a constituent was waiting for me, and luckily, I had enough time to talk to him. He gave me papers from a company called Midland Claims Specialist Ltd. I had not heard of it before, but it has dealt with industrial deafness. That is a straightforward matter for the coal board, because I believe that more than 100,000 claims have been settled and the process has been going on for a long time. A system is in place, whereby there is a form of a schedule, the sets of costs have been agreed with various solicitors and the procedures have been well established for about 15 years. The situation is relatively easy to address: one gets a hearing test and then, given the work history, it is determined whether there is a liability. Any liability is then settled and the solicitor gets some money. Because we are not talking about a claims handling agreement, the individual may pay some money to the solicitor, and that is all well and good. My constituent did not have a letter from a solicitor, but instead had a credit agreement, on which the clock was running. We shall see whether things have been done right or wrong in his case, but there is a principle at the heart of why there needs to be robust regulation. I rang up the claims handling company and the solicitors involved. The solicitors, Branton Bridge, said that all the paperwork is in order, as I am sure it must be. What Midland Claims Specialist Ltd said to me was interesting, so I took detailed notes. I was told, ““You should not expect to get copies of legal documents, as an individual taking an industrial deafness case. You should not expect to get anything yet from a solicitor; indeed, you should not have a letter from a solicitor. You should have only a credit agreement at this stage. It does not matter that the solicitors have not been in touch with him.”” The company thought that I was a friend and had not realised that I was representing my constituent. I was then asked, ““What is a Member of Parliament?”” Well, a Member of Parliament is a person who brings cases such as this one in front of the House to demonstrate that something is not quite right. The solicitor's letter has not yet reached my constituent, yet a credit agreement has, money is ticking—I believe that the interest rate on this is 14.6 per cent.—but there is no need for him to take out a loan because there is no risk of adverse cost in taking a case against the Government using the liabilities of the coal board. That has not been done before—there are more than 100,000 cases to demonstrate that. Many solicitors will take the case, so someone would not need to take out a loan. For some reason, my constituent was persuaded on the same day that he met someone for the first time that he needed to sign various documents. Like many of my constituents, I am not sure that he is exactly clear about what he signed. He has been told that this will not cost him. If he loses the case, it will not cost him, but if he wins, like many others, he will get X but Y will be deducted and Y will be pretty much the same as X. If he is unlucky, Y will be more than X, as has happened to some of my constituents—in other words, it has cost them to win their case. That is why appropriate regulation is so in order. It is not just these small claims handlers working as solicitors who are a problem. May I tell hon. Members about another case that I have been dealing with in the past week, involving a big firm of solicitors called Brooke North? It is the solicitors for the Union of Democratic Mineworkers. In my Brooke North files, I found an injunction that it said that it would take out against me two years and four months ago, with seven counts. It demanded that within 36 hours I should agree to do seven things that it wanted me to do. I wrote back—I kept a copy, of course—and said, explicitly, no to each item. No injunction followed. The firm would not have won if it had gone to court with that injunction—it also tried to injunct a firm of solicitors, which gave it a similarly robust response—but why was a firm of solicitors threatening an injunction and then not carrying it out? It is too late now, because the action has taken place and it cannot injunct me. That example gets to the heart of where the regulation now needs to go. Solicitors often threaten me, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) has had similar threats. Sometimes that is done behind the scenes and sometimes up front. The same happens to my constituents. The same firm of solicitors, Brooke North, recently wrote to one of my constituents and threatened him with court costs relating to proceedings for a debt. However, my constituent did not have a debt. He was one of those who went through UDM/Vendside—Brooke North is its solicitors—and he had paid the money it had asked for, so there was no debt. However, on the advice of Brooke North, Vendside had set up an escrow account and put my constituent's money in it. Now the same solicitors who had advised that the escrow account be set up threatened my constituent with court costs if he did not agree to the release of the money. He had never heard of Brooke North, but it was the same firm. Many of my constituents would panic in that situation, just as they would if other legal threats were made against them. That issue is not spoken about much, but some solicitors abuse their access to the justice system to intimidate the little person, the individual. That is why the Bill and its robustness are so important. It may come as a surprise, but I think that the Law Society deserves more praise than anyone over the past two and half years. In the early stages, I was very critical of the Law Society, some of the systems that it had in place and its slowness in acting. However, compared with every other regulator that I deal with, the Law Society is leap years ahead in its ability to learn and listen, and in the integrity of the individuals who work at every level, from the top down to the newest caseworker. They showed that integrity in their work with my constituents. Those working in the Law Society were shocked when they dealt with people, sometimes with limited or no literacy, or who were dying—some of my constituents died during the course of this Bill—and who were misled, deliberately in most cases, into paying out money that they should never have paid out. The Law Society emerges with tremendous credit from the process, and the reason that it does so is because it represents the decent solicitors. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) was wrong in his analysis that we are obsessed with solicitors being bad and evil people. The fact is that a tiny minority of solicitors has brought the profession into disrepute through their greed. The vast majority of solicitors deplore that, and many—from the smallest one-man bands to some of the biggest City firms—have been prepared to assist me in some of the cases that I have fought. When the Law Society has been robust in its approach, it has represented its profession well. What the Law Society and other regulators throughout the legal profession must do from now on is to think from the point of view of the consumer. I hope that one of the things that will emerge when the Bill becomes law in the near future is that the profession's ability to use its privileged access to the justice system to issue threats against those who challenge it in any way will be subject to significant investigation. That is what the board, under its independent chairperson, should be doing; it should look at how the legal profession is acting. It is not acceptable for a body to threaten people to consolidate its position. That is not decency, justice or democracy; it is bullying and, like everyone in the House, I abhor bullying of any kind. I add my congratulations to those given to the Minister and all those involved in creating the Bill, but we should not overlook the fundamental role of the Law Society and the change that has taken place. If other regulators copied the model of the Law Society and its responsiveness to the consumer, all our postbags would be lighter and all our constituents would be better served. I commend the society for its work. Question put and agreed to. Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed, with amendments.