Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, I shall first respond to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, who said that this House has not had an opportunity to debate these matters in detail. He is quite right. My understanding is that my noble friend the former Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said at Second Reading that the Government would bring forward amendments in this area. It was hoped that they would be brought forward during the passage of the Bill in your Lordships’ House. As it turned out, many discussions took place and it took time before the necessary amendments could be laid. They missed the opportunity to be debated in your Lordships’ House and were therefore introduced in the other place. I understand entirely what the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, is getting at, but there are difficulties in using the terms that he used connected with employment. My noble friend Lord Sawyer put his finger on it. Our worry is that a union wanting to provide reserved legal services might not be certain of the circumstances in which it would be able to do so within the exemption. The problem is that, if it was uncertain, that might lead to its reducing the services that it might offer, which might impact on access to justice, an issue that we will debate shortly. The government amendments have the virtue of certainty in that respect. It would also be worrying if a narrow interpretation connected with employment were to prevent advice from being given in the areas that my noble friend Lord Sawyer suggested. I know that much of the concern in this debate has focused on consumer protection. We think that the amendments offer sufficient protection to union members and will not affect the wider public. Including the provisions will give certainty over a vital trade union function, which is the ability of union officials, many of them lay people, to advise fellow members in the workplace. Those of us with experience of unions would testify that that is one of the most valuable jobs that unions do and contributes to the general well-being of many people. We were concerned that, if unions had to be regulated as entities, many of them would find it difficult to put in place the necessary arrangements in an economic and efficient way, which would militate against their ability to offer those services. The Joint Committee on the draft Bill discussed the matter in some detail. It said that it was concerned that the Bill as originally drafted could restrict the ability of trade unions to act in their members’ interests. We think that the amendments meet that point without unduly restricting the area in which this may operate, a result that might come about with the noble Lord’s amendment.