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Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, as anticipated by the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, I am strongly opposed to the amendment. Listening to most of these contributions, I feel that I live in an entirely different world from that of most of the people who have spoken today. I am particularly surprised at the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen. We need to consider how this will look to the punters out there. The noble Baroness has already declared my interest. I speak on behalf of consumers in one sense—in the strict sense that they are the clients of the legal profession—but also more widely on behalf of citizens who are concerned with the safeguard of the public interest, which was spoken about so much earlier this afternoon, when I say that this looks like a carve-up. It is subject to the concurrence—or the veto—of someone who people around the country see as the top lawyer. I know, and Members of this House know, that there is a difference between the judiciary and practising lawyers. Actually, practising lawyers appear before the courts; the courts are their arena. Many of them aspire to be members of the Bench, and many may aspire to be Lord Chief Justice. You cannot be Lord Chief Justice without being a lawyer. There is a difference in function, but there is not a difference in culture, and there is basically not a difference in interest. This seems to me to be an occasion where the intuitive view of the general public would be very different from that which the noble Baroness was alluding to. It may be that judges are held in somewhat higher esteem in Edinburgh than they are in south London. Nevertheless, I do not think that this would be seen as anything but the lawyers attempting to pull back the regulation of their profession to their own. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Currie, is no longer here, but it is almost as if the chair of Ofcom were appointed subject to the concurrence of Rupert Murdoch, or the chair of the Competition Commission were appointed subject to the concurrence of the chair of Tesco. That is the public appearance. I am sorry, but legal services are, in that sense, no different from any other service to the public and to consumers. I make this other point: that any appointment by a Secretary of State, whether it be the Lord Chancellor or anyone, is subject to the proceedings which the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen, has greatly advanced, and they are transparent proceedings. They are understood in all these areas of regulation, but the idea that the chair of the regulatory authority should be subject to the concurrence of those who are being regulated seems to me to be a complete nonsense and undermines the intention of the Bill. The idea that the Bill alters the balance between the independence of the legal profession and the state is a complete misunderstanding of the intention, the content and the letter of the Bill. It attempts to change the balance of power between the legal profession and its clients, and we have been given enough examples during the Bill’s earlier stages of when that relationship has clearly broken down and where we need a regulatory authority that is truly independent of the profession. I do not think that this amendment would in any way advance that perception among the general public.