---

Legal Services Bill [HL]

It is never my intention to confuse the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, and I apologise unreservedly if I did so by being unclear. As the noble Lord will know, I am always available to write to him or to sit down and discuss with him in greater detail. That is always unquestionably available as an option and it might be of some benefit in clarifying the point. I was seeking to argue why we feel that a general right of appeal would be inappropriate. In the context of the financial penalties we believe that it is appropriate to enable people to go directly to appeal. On the specific point that the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, raised, I feel that public censure is best left out. I apologise if I did not make that clear, but that is what I was seeking to do and it was probably by my reference back to the financial penalties appeal process that I failed to achieve it. In some ways I wish that we had had one big discussion on all the groups because we might have been able to explore the issues more fully, but that is where we are. We think that we have got the balance right. As ever, I will reflect on everything that has been said, but noble Lords will know that as a general position we want to ensure that judicial review is available as it would be for a public body and not to constrain that. We think that there are difficulties and issues with creating a general right of appeal, but we have recognised it in the financial circumstances.