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Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am not attempting to be at all irresponsible. We are setting up a professional Legal Services Board. It will be a body of the highest possible calibre, charged with the responsibilities that it must undertake. One of those responsibilities will be that it must behave in a proportionate manner. I would expect an institution of high calibre to be able to work out what that means in individual sets of circumstances. The Government can come up with a list of things. They can offer guidance and whatever if they so wish. The Legal Services Board can ignore that if it so wishes, too. It is an independent body; it has been charged with being proportionate in its activities. I met the smaller regulators on 5 February to discuss these issues. The Legal Services Board will have to take into account in all it does that it must behave proportionately, consistently and so on. So I have greater faith in its ability to operate as an organisation in that way. That does not mean that there would be any distinction between the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, and I if we were faced with decisions about how we would regard the concept of ““proportionate””. I just think that it is a word that has very clear meaning in the way that we approach decisions, and one with which noble Lords will be very familiar in all their activities. The nobleLord himself always operates in a very proportionate way. I do not believe that we can gain very much by doing more. I may consider guidance, but I am trying to be realistic and honest. If we are setting up a professional board and giving it clear ways in which it must operate, I am not sure that I would add much to that. That is my difficulty.