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Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Amendment No. 136B is in the same group of amendments as that of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. It would enable the Office for Legal Complaints to apply to the court on behalf of the complainant to enforce an award of compensation. One of the good things about the Bill is that OLC awards will be directly enforceable, thus removing many of the problems with the old system where awards made by the Law Society were not enforceable unless and until the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal made an order. However, the Bill still requires the complainants to enforce the awards through court action. Complainants who have had to go to the OLC due to a problem with the service that they have received from an authorised person may understandably lack the necessary confidence in the legal process and the legal profession to so act. Therefore, they may have reservations about instructing another lawyer to enforce the award and may feel also at a significant disadvantage in taking enforcement action on their own behalf against a qualified lawyer. There is also a genuine risk that recalcitrant authorised persons would refuse to pay an award in the hope that the complainant would not enforce it, in the secure knowledge that if he did not, no other person or body would have the power to do so. Equally, it is manifestly unfair to impose further delays on a complainant whose grievance has been upheld before they can receive their rightful award. The current system encourages such delays. All these problems could be removed at a stroke if the OLC had the power to take action to enforce awards on behalf of the complainant in cases where the complainant wished it to do so. This is a power that will hardly ever be exercised, as a solicitor will know that he will not be able to escape an award simply by not paying and hoping that the complainant does not enforce compensation. My amendment would help to maximise the effectiveness of the new arrangements for dealing with consumer complaints and should surely find favour with the Government’s promotion of the consumer interest in this Bill.