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Legal Services Bill [HL]

I am not sure whether I should continue this dialogue for much longer, but I did object to the threshold being lowered. I object to a series of amendments that seem to be proposed in this Committee which would somehow hobble the Legal Services Board, leaving it a toothless tiger, if I can mix my minor veterinary operation metaphors. I accept, however—I think that I made this clear last night—that the ideal position is that the Legal Services Board would be a light-touch regulator, intervening very rarely. But it is a supervisory board, and in any supervisory situation, whether in the workplace or in structures of institutions, the secret of being a good supervisor is to tread softly and carry a big stick which you occasionally show but, if possible, never use. It seems that the same relationship exists between the LSB and the front-line regulators. It has to have theoretically strong powers to enable the Law Society, in particular, to raise its game in fear of those deterrents; but the objective of the whole structure is that it would not have to use it very often, if at all, once the Law Society had raised its game.