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Legal Services Bill [HL]

I agree with the noble Lord that a complainant should not be prevented from making a claim on the Law Society’s compensation fund or, for that matter, the compensation fund of the Council for Licensed Conveyancers. Indeed, these compensation funds can make payments where the OLC would not be able to act. A clear example might be where a solicitor had improperly taken money from a client account and absconded. In such a case, a determination by the OLC would do little to ensure that a client who had suffered loss as a result received redress. The only recourse would be to make an application to the solicitors’ compensation fund, which is a ““fund of last resort”” administered by the Law Society. That is why the Bill specifically excludes compensation fund arrangements from the provisions in the Part 6 redress scheme. Clause 20, concerning regulatory arrangements, defines compensation arrangements in terms which clearly encompass compensation fund arrangements such as those of the Law Society and the Council for Licensed Conveyancers. Subsection (5)(b) of Clause 154, which is entitled ““Approved regulators not to make provision for redress””, excludes compensation arrangements so that the bar on making provision for redress does not apply to such a compensation fund and payments from it. I hope I have reassured the noble Lord that the Bill already provides for what this amendment seeks to achieve and that, on reflection, he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.