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Legal Services Bill [HL]

I find that I nearly always agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, says, but today is an exception. He is missing some of the politics, with a small ““p””, here. One of the motivating forces driving this Bill, to which the Government have responded, seems to me, based on the evidence that we heard in the Joint Committee, to be the consumer interests. They have been extraordinarily articulate, particularly Which?, and I congratulate it for the skills in advocacy that it has deployed. The consumer interests have run a very strong case in favour of a Bill such as this one, and they are very strong on the imperfections in the delivery of legal services by the existing professions, of which they are highly critical. They are also very critical of the proposal, in an amendment that we will debate later, on the practitioner panel. They want the chairman of the LSB always to be a lay person, and so on. The position that they are coming from is really one of strong animus against a watchful eye over the whole legal profession. That being the basis on which the consumer panel is founded, it seems to me only fair, on the basic principles of natural justice, that there should be some other panel to represent the interests of the professions, including the very small professions, which have been referred to, including trade marks and patent agents. Trade marks are smaller numerically. To have a body that could make an input into the LSB from practitioners would be a very healthy balancing and would make the whole of this new set-up look much fairer.