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Legal Services Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. Let me be clear about what I have committed myself to do—the crumbs of comfort from my cake. First, we are all agreed on the cautious approach, which I take to mean setting in train the opportunities for alternative business structures. I will go away and reflect on whether that cautious approach is suitably captured. Leaving the regulatory objectives aside for a moment, I will also go away and reflect on any further safeguards that may be provided and whether the clarity of what I have said about being able to direct and so on are there in the Bill. I turn to the regulatory objectives. For the reasons that I gave in my example, clearly quite badly, as usual—where you have created something that gives 99.9 per cent but not 0.1 per cent—I am not keen on the hierarchical objectives. We have discussed that before. However, we absolutely do not to move towards the idea that one could be ignored completely, particularly where access to justice is concerned. Finally, I will go away and reflect on the whole question of how we know what has happened. The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, quite reasonably says there is no such provision in the Bill; there is not. I have no idea whether my noble and learned friend would wish to include such provision, but the point has been well made. It is clear in any event that, somewhere along the way, the Legal Services Board, in its overview, will need to know what is happening, whether it is in Birmingham or across the UK. I make those commitments, which the noble Lord knows I will honour, to go away and look at all those issues, and to come back before Report to discuss with noble Lords exactly how we think we can address them. I will either satisfy him or I will not, but we will at least have tackled those issues. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have enabled me to hear some of the issues, not least the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf.