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Legal Services Bill [HL]

Once again I am most grateful to the noble Baroness. I quite understand that if the concerns that she expressed about the operation of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal were true, the LSB would need certain powers to correct the situation. But that is not the matter which concerns the solicitors’ disciplinary body. It is concerned about those rules which are necessary for the day-to-day management of cases—rules about evidence, the conduct of hearings and the administration of the tribunal. These rules are manifestly mainly in the purview of the tribunal and have nothing whatever to do with the concerns that she expressed. The tribunal simply wants to be allowed to determine these matters itself, either directly in conjunction with the Legal Services Board or, as before, with the Master of the Rolls. The procedure to do so has been relatively straightforward previously and there is no reason why it should not continue to be. But instead, even to make changes to these matters which are uniquely within its own purview, it is now required to comply with the enormous complexities of Clauses 171 to 173. If the noble Baroness wants to set up a regime to deal with circumstances in which the tribunal deliberately or negligently does not expedite its work, that is understandable, but that is not the concern that the amendment is designed to address. It is concerned with, I suppose, the equivalent to the rules of conduct in any of our courts; those matters would be most inappropriately handled by the kind of provisions that the Government have inserted in Clause 171 to 173.