UK Parliament / Open data

Legal Services Bill [HL]

Proceeding contribution from Lord Kingsland (Conservative) in the House of Lords on Wednesday, 17 October 2007. It occurred during Debate on bills on Legal Services Bill [HL].
My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister. I understand his dilemma very well. When I said that this matter had been introduced in another place out of the blue and had not been considered at all by your Lordships’ House, I did not in anyway mean to criticise him personally. Indeed, there are often circumstances in the middle of a Bill’s passage in which, because of an event over which one has no control, one has suddenly to introduce an element that was not considered by one or other of the two Houses. I would not want him to think that I was trying to make a party-political point. Nevertheless, the problem with introducing this at such a late stage is that we cannot have the normal exchange of views—the normal process of iteration—which often brings us, especially in your Lordships’ House, to an amicable conclusion. The difficulty is that this is the one and only time we have to consider this matter. I have much sympathy with what has been said on all sides of the House. The concern of the noble Lord, Lord Sawyer, about the definition in our amendment in relation to matters connected with the provision of advice on employment is a perfectly sound observation. I cannot be sure exactly what the scope of our amendment will be. Indeed, nobody can be sure of the scope of any of the clauses in the Bill. I have tried, as accurately as possible, to distinguish those services that legitimately ought to be given by a trade union to its members in the context of employment and the other services, which were extremely well defined by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden. She reminded us that trade unions have traditionally offered—even advertised—services with a view to attracting members. That is precisely the area at which this amendment is targeted. We think, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, said, almost in aphorism, that those individuals deserve the same standard of protection as every other consumer in the country. Many of those services are totally unconnected with the employment function that it is the duty of the union to protect. In those circumstances, I am inclined to ask the opinion of the House, realising that, if we win, the Government will have an opportunity to look at the matter again. On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 4A) shall be agreed to? Their Lordships divided: Contents, 174; Not-Contents, 138. 5: Page 7, line 16, after ““(6)”” insert ““Subject to that,”” 6: Page 9, line 17, leave out from ““who”” to end of line 18 and insert ““, for the purposes of carrying on the relevant activity, is an exempt person by virtue of- (a) Schedule 3 (exempt persons), or (b) paragraph 13 or 18 of Schedule 5 (additional categories of exempt persons during transitional period).”” 7: Page 11, line 29, leave out ““(other than an individual)”” 8: Page 12, line 1, leave out ““a”” and insert ““an independent”” 9: Page 14, line 26, leave out ““and”” and insert ““or””

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

695 c720 

Session

2006-07

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
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