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Legal Services Bill [HL]

If what happens is what the noble Lord has described, I would do nothing other than agree with him. We have said that the board can say at the beginning that there are areas to be exempt, or add areas to be exempt, precisely because, as he says—this is the discussion that I had with the professions—we want to make sure that we do not delve down to a ridiculous level of trying to be involved in small alterations or alterations which may seem quite substantial but are ongoing and clearly recognised to be normal practice in the professions. That is covered by the ability of the board to be exempt. Starting from the premise that everything is exempt unless the board says otherwise, you have to ask how the board would go about determining on every aspect of the possibility of change what should or should not be exempt. My argument is that it would have to delve into and think about every possible permutation of change and alteration that could take place across all regulators. To achieve the same objective, it is much better to have the ability to exempt or, as I have said, to tick things off and the ability to look only at those changes that matter. Rightly and properly, the professions have raised how that process will work in a timely and appropriate manner which does not involve massive form-filling and so on. I could not agree more. We have already undertaken to look at that to ensure it is appropriate. I simply argue that, whereas the objective behind the amendment to make the system simpler and easier would appear on the face of it to work, when thinking about it, the LSB would be put in a position where it would have to consider everything from the beginning rather than dealing with the practical issues that come up when alterations are made. In some areas no alterations would ever be made.