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Legal Services Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 46: 46: Clause 12 , page 5, line 28, at end insert— ““( ) will-writing for fee, gain or reward;? The noble Lord said: My Lords, I do not want to rehearse the arguments that we heard in Committee, or the recommendation of the Joint Committee in its report at paragraph 216 on page 65, but I want to raise an issue again in moving Amendment No. 46, in the light of the submission that I have just received from the Institute of Professional Willwriters. Apparently, the institute was formed in 1991 to set voluntary standards in the unregulated will writing market. On page 79 of the White Paper, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor made a very specific pledge: "““The Government will continue to work closely with consumer bodies, the providers of will writing services and bodies that represent them to help raise quality, standards and consumer awareness?." I was therefore very surprised indeed to hear from the Institute of Professional Willwriters that it had submitted a detailed report to the Department for Constitutional Affairs in September 2005 outlining in detail its belief that, "““a voluntary regulatory regime is unlikely to be effective in dealing with the issues that face the will writing profession?." Despite the words of the noble and learned Lord, that organisation has advised me that there has been no consultation at all with the DCA since September 2005. In fact, the institute has received no contact from the noble and learned Lord’s department since a meeting in July in 2005 that ended with a commitment on the part of the department that a further meeting would be scheduled for later in 2005. The institute has asked me how that is ““working closely? with the people who represent professional will writers. In the light of that, although I know that the noble Baroness gave me a convincing response on the issue, I am sure that she cannot have been aware that that commitment by the noble and learned Lord in the White Paper to work closely with this body had been disregarded by the department in the way that I have described. I felt that I had to raise the issue again. I beg to move.