Legal Services Bill [HL]

rose to move, as an amendment to Motion C, leave out from ““House”” to end, and insert, ““do insist on its disagreement to Commons Amendments Nos. 74 to 77 and 81 to 88, do disagree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 88B and 88C and 88E to 88M, do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 88D, and do propose Amendment No. 88N as an amendment thereto— 88N: Leave out lines 3 and 4 and insert ““obtain the concurrence of the Lord Chief Justice””. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I begin with the declaration of interest that I have many times made in debates on the Bill: the first is that I am a member of the Bar; the second is that in the past I served for many years on the Bar Council; and the third is that I held the office of Chairman of the Bar. But I am not today a spokesman for the Bar Council and I have not been privy to the discussions which it has had with the Minister; I am an independent Cross-Bencher. We have before us an important policy issue. There are a lot of words in the amendments, but they really boil down to the overriding importance of the Legal Services Board, because it will be an overarching board—overarching, among others, the professions of barrister and solicitor. The view that I advance is that, that being a body of such enormous and wide-ranging powers, it is appropriate that the appointments to and removal from the board should have the concurrence of the Lord Chief Justice. I stated last time my understanding of the meaning of the word ““consultation”” and cited a case, or gave the details of a case, but there has been no comeback on that point. It is clear that consultation is weaker than concurrence. My primary point is to persuade this House to re-establish the position as we established it in many votes in the past and to insert the words, "““concurrence of the Lord Chief Justice””," in all the appropriate positions. I should like to say one thing about consultation. We are now faced with an extension in the legislative intent as regards consultation with the Lord Chief Justice. Under the language that I have seen, it will certainly cover the appointments process and may indeed go beyond that, if one has regard to the correspondence that has evidently been taking place between one of the Ministers and the Lord Chief Justice. I say nothing about that, because I have not seen the correspondence. I have a point of principle on consultation. That is that the more that the Lord Chief Justice becomes involved in the process of setting up the board and the criteria for selection, the closer that we get to risking a conflict between separate powers of the state. Your Lordships will recall very well that we set up a Supreme Court in order to protect the principle that the judiciary and the legislative role were in no way in conflict. Similarly, in a scene that can be conjured up in one’s mind’s eye, the Lord Chief Justice could, by this route—which includes one of the amendments made in the Commons—be drawn into the consultation process and become, as it were, part of the machinery of government. No doubt that will be hotly denied, but it is a risk that it is possible to envisage. My primary point is about who makes the ultimate decision on who holds these jobs and how they can be removed. My view is that it should be the Lord Chief Justice. There has been some reference in the past to a code of practice under some other legislation, in which it is made clear that the Minister is, as it were, the top man, and has the ultimate responsibility for appointing the various offices. The short answer to that is that we are discussing not a code but primary legislation, and it is your Lordships who are taking a view on the correct decision. Should the Bill provide for the concurrence of the Lord Chief Justice, so that he can prevent an election of which he disapproves, or will mere consultation be good enough? That is the issue. I beg to move. Moved, as an amendment to Motion C, leave out from ““House”” to end, and insert ““do insist on its disagreement to Commons Amendments Nos. 74 to 77 and 81 to 88, do disagree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 88B and 88C and 88E to 88M, do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 88D, and do propose Amendment No. 88N as an amendment thereto.—(Lord Neill of Bladen.)