Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, the House has debated this matter on many occasions and very fully. I shall try to be telegraphic in my observations. It seems to me, as it has to many other of your Lordships, that the key to this issue is the relationship between the judiciary and the legal profession. The independence of the judiciary can be maintained only if the legal profession that appears before it is itself independent. That is true, particularly, in our adversarial system. Judges rely on lawyers being completely honest about the state of the case as they know it. If they did not, the decisions of judges would not be independent. It is equally true that the independence of the legal profession is protected by the judges. Advocates know that they can speak freely in front of judges. Judges protect advocates from Ministers. Many Ministers have attacked members of the legal profession during the past two years—I do not think that the Minister can be in any doubt of that. The legal profession can continue confidently and independently because it has the support of the judiciary. There is no conflict between the consumer and an independent legal profession. It must be in the interests of the client of a lawyer that that lawyer is independent of the Executive. What is wrong with the Bill is that the person who decides who is to become a member of the Legal Services Board is an elected Minister in another place, subject to the party Whip, who does not need even to be a lawyer—in saying that, I do not cast any aspersions on the right honourable gentleman the Secretary of State for Justice. However, that is a fact. Even on the assumption that he will take his decisions fearlessly, will he be perceived as doing so? That is just as important as the fact on the ground. Why were the Government so assiduous in making sure that there was a Judicial Appointments Commission to choose judges, which had nothing whatever to do with the Executive, but have taken quite the opposite approach to the selection of members of the Legal Services Board? Surely the logic of the independence of the legal profession and the judiciary must lead one to conclude that one needs a system of selection for members of the Legal Services Board that is equally as objective as that for members of the judiciary. I am grateful to the Minister for having moved in our direction; but I do not find the detail of what he said about consultation sufficiently convincing to change my view about the way I shall vote tonight if the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen, presses his amendment.