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Legal Services Bill [HL]

Again, I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising this issue. I know that the Law Society has raised concerns about the inclusion of the word ““hardship””, and I imagine that that has prompted the amendment. Our purpose in Schedule 16 was to give the Law Society a greater degree of flexibility by establishing a compensation scheme with a greater emphasis on rule-making powers rather than statute-based powers. The flexibility that we are searching for would allow the Law Society to make rules about how moneys for the fund are collected and how, and in what circumstances, payments can be made out of the fund to those who have suffered loss. It says in my note—I cannot resist reading it out—that we accept that the way in which we sought to achieve this increased flexibility may have made it more difficult to understand how the compensation fund is expected to work. I absolutely understand what the noble Lord is seeking to do. Perhaps I may take this matter away and discuss it further with the Law Society. My intention will be, as with the version already contained in Schedule 16, to give the Law Society greater flexibility in how it administers and operates the compensation fund arrangements but to try to make those arrangements more straightforward. That is what I shall seek to achieve in my discussions with the Law Society and I shall come back to your Lordships on that point.