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Legal Services Bill [HL]

There would not be a devastating effect on access to justice. That is the point. I will use my words rather than the noble Lord’s. I said that when looking at the objectives in the round, the board would determine the weight to be given. I will try to think of an example, although it is always dangerous because I get run over immediately I try to do that. If an alternative business structure planned to offer high-quality accessible legal services in a particular area, but the firm with which it was working already had one lawyer doing a particular piece of work and the new alternative business structure was not sure whether it wished to incorporate it, the board could do two things. It could say, ““No, we will direct you to continue doing that work””, or it could say, ““Well, two miles down the road someone else of good quality is doing that work, so we won't direct you””, because the access to justice has not been adversely affected overall. If you look at it purely from a hierarchical point of view you could argue that you could never allow that one lawyer to cease that work because, in theory, the access to justice from that firm would have been altered. I deliberately chose a hypothetical situation because I wanted to try to explore it. But the idea that there could be any kind of devastating effect would completely run against everything that we have said about the Bill and that we are seeking to achieve. It is really important that the board is able to look at business structures and regulatory objectives in the round, for exactly the reasons that I have given. When I send noble Lords Neelie Kroes’s speeches they will see that she consistently makes the point that improving competition and access to justice can have a really positive effect. Those objectives can be interrelated in many circumstances—and that is very important, too. It is right and proper for noble Lords to be concerned that when alternative business structures are set up something does not get lost. For the noble and learned Lord, the idea that people would lose out in getting justice is horrendous. I agree with him completely; that would be absolutely detrimental. But in the example I have just given, you would have to look at it in the context of what is happening in that area and where else people would be able to get those services. If for 99.9 per cent of the population in a particular area there were better and broader services, of higher quality and with better investment, and it could be demonstrated that for the 0.1 per cent an alternative way had been found—either by direction or in another way—everyone would be perfectly comfortable with that. Noble Lords are absolutely right to say that in designing the rules, building up to the licensing authorities and enabling people to be licensed, we must ensure that these objectives operate properly and are not overridden completely in a way that noble Lords are worried about. I am treating this debate as my chance to explore these issues, as noble Lords would expect, and to ensure that we have got this completely right. I am beginning to think, too, that we must make sure that we see what happens and how the board does what it does, and I shall be giving feedback to my honourable friend Bridget Prentice and my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor in that regard. These are not necessarily issues to put in the Bill, but they are ones to explore properly and make sure that we get right. The principle is to ensure that people do not just cherry pick and that if services start to deteriorate or become nonexistent in particular areas either there can be direction or it will be agreed not to give the alternative business structure approval. We want to ensure that firms are operating in the right and appropriate way to meet all the objectives while recognising that they are to be taken in the round and weighed for their advantages and disadvantages before making a decision. We need to be crystal clear that there could not be circumstances in which there was a devastating effect on access to justice.