---

Legal Services Bill [HL]

I strongly agree with my noble friend Lord Kingsland and the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan. The Government have decided to set up a Consumer Panel in this legislation. One needs to ask why. As the Minister is aware, there is strong feeling that there is an over-representation of the consumer interest here. I refer back to the debates that we have had about the public interest and the independence of the profession. But the Government have decided to go beyond allowing the normal representations from consumer bodies and have laid down in statute that there should be a Consumer Panel. In an earlier debate the Minister said that that was modelled very much on the Consumer Panel set up inter alia to advise the Financial Services Authority. But that is only one part of the mechanism by which the Financial Services Authority is informed. It has a Consumer Panel but it also has a practitioner panel. We shall deal with the detail of a practitioner panel in just a moment, but the Minister needs to explain why the Government have gone with just one limb of the expertise which the Financial Services Authority can draw on. It is a slightly dangerous analogy for the Minister to use because the Government and, in particular,Sir David Clementi, said that the Legal Services Board is not the FSA. I suppose that the Minister could say that this is an example of why it is different because it does not have a practitioner panel. But that is not really an argument. Why is it thought necessary to have the consumer interest so strongly represented? I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, that CIPA and ITMA have a strong case when they say that there needs to be some guarantee of professional input, particularly for the smaller professions. It is especially necessary for areas of more specialised expertise such as patent or trade mark practice. The Financial Services Authority, a confessed light-touch regulator—although some of us have our doubts about that—needs the expertise of the practitioner as well as the consumer interest right at the heart of its operations. So why have the Government decided to seek only a Consumer Panel in this instance? My noble friend’s amendment is very good. In fact, it is so good that I see that I have appended my name to it. The Minister needs to explain why the new clause that we are discussing cannot be inserted. If she is about to accept Amendment No. 38, I shall have to rethink whether I shall move Amendments Nos. 38A, 38B, 38C and 38D. I look forward to her explanation.