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Legal Services Bill [HL]

I indicated earlier that I would oppose Amendment No. 56; what has been said has not changed my mind. I completely accept the role of judicial review in the decisions of the LSB, as do—I think—the Government. We are setting out, in the Bill grounds of appeal to relatively minor sanctions. We have an appellate procedure as regards fines, but when it comes to public censure and variation, we are dealing with relatively minor interventions by the LSB. Normally, appellate bodies are confined to points of law; these are essentially points of judgment. Unless we seriously restrict the LSB in such a way that every one of its relatively minor interventions, or threats of intervention, could lead to the High Court, we are in danger of reducing the influence of the LSB over the behaviour of the Law Society. People will tell me that such appeals will not happen frequently, but we are dealing with lawyers and the legal system. The more we put in the Bill to restrict or second-guess the LSB, the less effective it will become in changing the behaviour of the frontline regulators, which is the objective of this Bill.