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Legal Services Bill [HL]

I understand entirely what the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen, seeks to do, and I pay tribute to the enormous amount of work that I know he did on the Joint Committee. He once again reminded us that it sat for only eight weeks, but it clearly successfully gave us a very important report on which the Government have acted in most places, if not all. I am extremely grateful to him. I do not disagree with the sentiment that lies behind the amendment, nor, indeed, with the concerns that noble Lords have raised, particularly around small firms and rural communities. Noble Lords will know Sir David Clementi, when talking about rural services, said that the benefits of new service providers, "““are not only that they can bring about lower costs; it is also that through longer opening hours, sophisticated telephony and advanced customer care skills, they may be able to offer consumers better access to certain other types of legal services””." So I completely accept the issues around rural communities and, indeed, poor communities. I do not, obviously, accept what has been said about how the Government approach this. I am reminded though, in terms of other services we provide for our poorer and more vulnerable communities, that actually one tries to provide the highest quality service one possibly can. That can be provided by the local small supplier, but sometimes it can be provided because you are able to encourage others to come in, invest in the area and provide more sophisticated services that provide greater benefit. I have nothing against the sentiments behind the amendment, and I have striven throughout our discussions on Part 5, which I shall not repeat again, not least because of the lateness of the hour and the fact that noble Lords have heard them well enough, to stress that there are really important issues to be addressed in the context of how this is rolled out. The question for me is whether the amendment would help us to deliver most appropriately. For me, it would not. There is a real question of how we would do significantly more research. The noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen, asked specifically about this. We have research from Australia, and I gather that we have more information on other countries. Perhaps I can send that to the noble Lord and put copies in your Lordships’ Library, as well as copy it to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, so that it informs better the information that we currently have. I have sought to address the concerns that have been expressed by considering a number of things as I have gone through the Bill. Licensing authorities need to satisfy themselves about the range of safeguards and so on. I agreed to see whether we can strengthen the relevant arrangements in the Bill. I have undertaken particularly to look at the whole question of how we might monitor what has happened. The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, tabled an amendment that was very helpful to our discussions on Part 5 and which I have said I want to think about and see what we might do. We believe that in practice licensing authorities are very likely to take a step-by-step approach to ABS, for all the reasons that your Lordships have quite reasonably given and for the reason that we wish to see this being developed properly. We also know that the requirements in the legislation can place conditions on ABS firms and can say, in effect, ““Sorry, but you have not provided proper services appropriately””. They can also specify that ABS firms must deal with the sort of litigant described by the noble and learned Baroness. We should not, however, think that we can continue to do endless research and come up with any more information than we currently have. We now need to consider in a measured way what has happened and think about the monitoring arrangements. I completely accept that we also need to ensure that we have dealt with access to justice and so on appropriately. I have already begun to spend some time thinking about how we might do that. I have no difficulty with the assumptions that underlie the noble Lord’s amendment; we are arguing merely about how we get there. For me, it is about moving on in a measured way and having hard evidence about what has actually happened in order to take the decisions that we indicated we would take in Part 5. So although I understand what the noble Lord is seeking to do, I hope that he will withdraw his amendment. I will consider all the issues on Report that I already indicated I would consider.