---

Legal Services Bill [HL]

Nevertheless, I hope that the Minister can understand the natural sense of unfairness experienced by these two organisations, which are in a very different position from, say, solicitors and the Law Society, whose resources and ability to meet the financial demands of the Legal Services Board put them in a different position. The Bill requires approved regulators to strictly separate two activities—the regulatory activity and the representative activity—yet, when it comes to financial levies by the Legal Services Board, all the assets of the institution that provides the approved regulator, whether committed to regulation or not, are vulnerable to levy by the Legal Services Board. There is real inequity here, and it is not readily understood, at least by these two organisations. The Minister said that that is a matter for the Legal Services Board to sort out. Once again, I hope she will be able to find some way of indicating to it that it should respond to this situation sympathetically because, in principle, the board ought to address levies only to the regulatory arm of the approved regulator. I can understand why it is very attractive for a creditor to try to seize all the available assets, but if a proportion of those assets has nothing to do with regulation, there is a certain logic in not allowing those assets to become vulnerable.