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Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, I will commit to do that. I completely accept that from the noble Lord’s perspective it would be difficult to make that distinction without those comparisons, so I am more than happy to do what he asks. I am sorry that I cannot give the figures now, but quite reasonable issues have been raised. I saw a story in the Times this morning—it may have been in other press as well—and although the figures were not inaccurate, the assumptions about transitional costs were not right. We want to look at them again because we do not believe that they are completely accurate, not least because some genuine issues have been raised. My noble and learned friend has led this in the past two or three weeks and has made it clear that he wants to be certain of the figures before your Lordships debate these questions, for the obvious reason that noble Lords will divide or not depending on whether they think that this is a reasonable issue. Of course, comparisons are important. I just want to say a word about the Legal Complaints Service, because the Bar Council has been commended in your Lordships’ House for the work that it has done and the Legal Complaints Service sometimes receives a less good press. The Legal Complaints Service wrote to me to say what it had achieved from April 2006 to May 2007. Fifty-nine per cent of its files were closed within three months with a target of 57 per cent and 94 per cent of its files were closed within 12 months with a target of 94 per cent. The Legal Complaints Service wanted me to say that and I think that we should recognise that success in trying to sort out the underlying issues. The regulatory framework that we are putting in place in the OLC is important, but it is worth putting that on the record. Of course we will deal with this effectively. My difficulty with including the partnership conceptin the Bill is that it changes the nature of the relationship too much. We believe that, threaded through the Bill in the different ways that we have expressed the relationship, we have captured what is needed. Noble Lords will make their own minds up on that, but we think that we have achieved what is required. As ever, there is nothing much between us.