---

Legal Services Bill [HL]

I am not sure that this is a road that I should be walking slowly down, but I wanted to put the record straight. It was this Chamber—this House—that decided that the post of Lord Chancellor could not just be abolished. In the Government’s defence, I do not think that anybody had taken advice from the civil servants. Indeed, I have met a number of previous Cabinet Secretaries who have told me with great authority that if only someone had asked the Cabinet Secretary, he would have pointed out all the difficulties in abolishing such a post. However, I was not proposing to go down that route until the Minister pushed me.