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Legal Services Bill [HL]

I see this really as a probing amendment, giving the Minister an opportunity for reflection. I can see the good sense of the first chairman not being a lawyer in practical terms and I am sure the word ““perception”” may emanate from the Ministerial Bench at some point in the reply. But if I had done more homework, I think I could have produced a rather surprising number of people of enormous independence who just happen 35 years before to have qualified as a solicitor or something of that nature, or possibly to have passed the Bar exams and done a pupilage but nothing more, who would be excluded. All I would commend to the Minister is that she might, with the assistance of her department, go away and think about it and see if a sufficiently clear form of words could be found which did not exclude quite a lot of the field.