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Legal Services Bill [HL]

I hope that the Committee will forgive me for coming back again; I shall try to be brief. I ask the noble Baroness to look at the situation in employment law, where there is a very well honed path. In employment law, there is no rule that if someone takes an employer to a tribunal and the employer is found to have been right, the employer then has to pay the costs, which is the equivalent of what the noble Baroness suggests. In employment law, there are frequently very sensible settlements at different stages in cases of alleged unfair dismissals and so on. That will happen in any event—I hope that I still have the noble Baroness’s ear—when the proper principles are applied. Those of us on this side of the Chamber are simply arguing that the proper, normal, just and fair principles should apply. The noble Baroness is an experienced Minister and she has a hint of steel within her, but one has to watch for the word ““stubborn”” as well—something that I have sometimes been accused of. I think that she is off-beam on this matter and I hope that she will continue to reflect on it.