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Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for responding to both points I raised. I take the second first. I entirely accept that the Government have rightly identified two distinct areas in which competition law should operate, and have provided four distinct authorities. On one hand the LSB deals with anti-competitive practices by the individual authorised person; and on the other hand you have, as far as concerns the regulators, a triumvirate of the OFT, the Secretary of State and the Competition Commission. I respectfully agree with the noble Baroness that the provisions in the Bill, although highly complex and potentially hugely expensive for this regime, make sense in principle. My concern is about how they will operate in practice; because if you identify anti-competitive behaviour, for example, between authorised persons, which you trace back to an anti-competitive provision in the rules of the regulator, how will you sort that out without some liaison between the LSB on one hand and the other three authorities on the other? That question leads me to ask whether the noble Baroness believes there is sufficient provision in the Bill for guidance to be given on this issue so as to ensure that, operationally, the relative roles of these institutions are clearly understood. This regime is paid for by the authorised persons. Clauses 56 to 60 are intensely complicated and potentially hugely expensive. I believe that the authorised persons have a right to know exactly how the Government see this operating in practice. I recognise that that aspect of my intervention is probably new to the noble Baroness. I do not expect her to answer it today; but it would be extremely reassuring if at Third Reading she could look into the question of liaison a little more thoroughly. As regards the first question, there are a number of issues on which we are at the moment inclined to seek a Division of your Lordships’ House. This is an important issue, but it is not of such over-riding importance that it falls into that category. In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.