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Legal Services Bill [HL]

I am not absolutely sure what consultation at this stage there will have been with anyone else. The way in which this took place was to ask the committee, which, as I say, represents all the pro bono organisations—the Bar Council, the Law Society, the education institutions, the voluntary advisory sector, the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux and legal advice centres—““What do you think the best solution is?””. It looked at that and set up a working group; it determined that the best way to proceed would be to set up a single charity that would be able to receive moneys, perhaps from other sources as well, and distribute them strategically. The full committee endorsed that proposal. In particular, the noble Lord’s amendment was put to it at its last meeting, it had a debate about it and it said that it still thought that the right course was the single route for the reasons that I have attempted to summarise.