---

Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, it is with some hesitation that I intervene at this stage of the debate on this amendment. In view of some of the things I have heard since I re-entered the Chamber, perhaps I should disclose an interest as a former Lord Chief Justice. I apologise for not being here, but the reason may have some relevance. Tomorrow a new commercial court will be opened for Dubai’s financial centre. The chief justice of that court is Sir Anthony Evans, who is a distinguished judge and arbitrator, and a former member of the Court of Appeal. The court will apply the common law. It is being established in such a way because of the belief in the qualities of the legal system of which this country is the mother, and of the standards of judicial behaviour pertaining in this jurisdiction. I was about to engage in preparing a greeting to that court because I am now the president of a similar, sister court in the Gulf state of Qatar. Again, that court will apply common law standards. I thought that it might be relevant to explain my absence; I was preparing that statement, which must go off tonight, as the arrangements for me to appear on video, as originally intended, have gone awry. Even though I do not vote in this House because I also sit here as a judge, I want, if I may, to take the opportunity to make two more points. First—this should appeal to Ministers—I suggest that this amendment accords with the concordat that I was responsible for negotiating with the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to become a Minister of Justice. We saw the importance of a partnership between the role of the Lord Chancellor and the new role of the chief justice, particularly in relation to situations where it was important that it should appear that the roles of the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice should be seen to be independent, but where they both had a legitimate interest to protect. As to that legitimate interest in the present situation, the independence of our judiciary is dependent on the independence of our legal profession. We could not have an independent judiciary were it not for the independence of the legal profession from which our judges are selected. They become judges with that independence as part of their natural instinct. It is not something that they have to relearn when becoming a judge; it is the independence that they have practised throughout their professional life. It is so important that we take what steps we can to ensure that that independence survives and flourishes. The board will be only one factor in the future of the legal profession that can have an impact on the independence to which I have just referred. Looking into the future, because of the constitutional changes that we have passed into law, we have to recognise that the role of the Lord Chancellor will evolve and change. We have to recognise that his involvement in the court system will be diminished not because of any wish on his part, but because of his other commitments. The very heavy responsibilities that he will have as Minister of Justice, with which no Lord Chancellor has ever been saddled, mean that he will not be so closely involved with the judiciary or with the legal profession, no matter what his personal inclination may be. He will be able to delegate to other Ministers many of his responsibilities. But a Lord Chief Justice does not and cannot do that to the same extent, if at all. The important matter to be borne in mind is that in requiring his concurrence, there will at least be a conversation of the sort that the concordat again and again envisaged between the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice of the day, where one can be assured that the members of the board will be of the quality necessary to ensure the quality of the legal profession. I support the amendment, although, for the reasons I have given, I will not vote. I shall say a final word to the Minister, if I may. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, about her desire to meet the interests of those who have a point to make when promoting a Bill to the House. I echo what has been said about a desire to conciliate and mediate; that is highly desirable. The spirit with which the concordat was negotiated should be borne in mind by Ministers, including the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, when they come to make their decisions on the amendment.