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Legal Services Bill [HL]

It will be even more interesting. I join all noble Lords who have congratulated my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway on introducing this intriguing probing amendment. In a way, the debate that my noble friend has engendered has anticipated about seven or eight detailed amendments which deal individually with Clauses 31 to 40. But I have concluded that it is helpful to try and grapple with the central issue that lies behind these amendments at this juncture. Ideally, what the Government ought to have done for Clauses 31 to 40 and perhaps beyond, too, would have been to provide a general right of appeal to the High Court, making it clear that all the remedies available in a judicial review action would be available to a litigant seeking to exercise that right of appeal. What we have instead, as the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, said, is a limited number of clauses against which a right of appeal can be exercised. In addition, the right of appeal is qualified by what is traditionally described as an ouster clause. There is no mention whatever of judicial review in the Bill. Naturally, that has led many of your Lordships to ask three questions. First, are all the remedies which would be available to somebody utilising judicial review available under the current rights of appeal? That is the first line of questioning. The second is: what is the intended reach of the ouster clause? The third is: in circumstances where there is no right of appeal, can judicial review be used? This is perhaps a little unfair, because I know that the noble Baroness was going to deal with these issues incrementally, but it would be helpful to have some general guidance at this point.