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Legal Services Bill [HL]

The purpose of encouraging this clause-stand-part debate is to raise the issue of immigration advice, which has not been considered previously in the Bill. The Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 established a new regulatory structure for immigration advice under the auspices of the Immigration Services Commissioner. Despite the fact that immigration advice is clearly a legal service, responsibility for the Immigration Services Commissioner was granted to the Home Office and not to the Department for Constitutional Affairs. It was hoped that the Bill might rectify this anomaly, especially as the situation will now become even more curious. The Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner will cede its supervisory role over lawyers to the Legal Services Board, but it will continue in relation to non-lawyer advisers and also, most unsatisfactorily, in respect of any activities which England and Wales lawyers may conduct in other parts of the United Kingdom. The OISC will remain under the supervision of the Home Office while the Legal Services Board will fall under the department’s jurisdiction. Given that the provision of advice in immigration matters is, to all intents and purposes, a reserved legal activity, and it is a criminal offence to provide the service without being regulated, why is it absent from the list under Clause 12 and not treated as a reserved legal activity under the Bill? Secondly, we have heard from the Government and seen in the Joint Committee report that one of the purposes of the Bill was to simplify the regulatory maze of legal services. Why have the Government, therefore, in attempting to tidy up everything else, left the Immigration Services Commissioner outside the ambit of the Legal Services Board? Finally, why should responsibility for the commissioner not be given to the Department for Constitutional Affairs, which is generally responsible for legal services, rather than being left to the Home Office, which would clearly be the potential opposing party in virtually all cases conducted by immigration advisers?