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Legal Services Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 83: 83: Schedule 4, page 132, line 40, leave out sub-paragraph (3) and insert— ““(3) Alterations are exempt unless the Board has directed that they are not to be treated as exempt for the purposes of this paragraph.? The noble Lord said: The noble Baroness resisted this amendment in Committee. Her reasons for doing so, I fear, furnish further evidence that the Government are unwilling to reflect the principle to which they say they adhere—trust the approved regulator—on the face of the Bill. Our amendment reverses the presumption that the approval of the Legal Services Board should be needed before rule changes can come into effect. I do not believe that it would be helpful if I were to rehearse in detail a debate that stretched over seven columns—cols. 952 to 960—of Hansard on 22 January. In its course, apposite contributions were made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, and my noble friends Lord Campbell of Alloway and Lord Hunt of Wirral. The Minister made no fewer than 11 interventions in a courageous, but vain, attempt to vitiate their collective wisdom. I must confess that I remain at a complete loss to understand why the solution we propose would prove, as the noble Baroness asserted, considerably more bureaucratic and costly than that in the Bill. I believe that my view is shared by all noble Lords who participated in the debate. Under our scheme, the approved regulators will consult on all the changes they propose. The Legal Services Board will know what is intended well in advance of implementation. If it wishes to object, our amendment entitles it to do so. It is our amendment that reflects the underlying philosophy that the Government claim to espouse, not the draft provision in the Bill. It is worth recalling the Government’s words in response to the report of the Joint Committee, which were that the Legal Services Board should exercise its powers only where the approved regulators were ““clearly failing?. The Legal Services Board is not there constantly to second-guess the judgment of the approved regulators. It is not its task to comb around looking for trouble. Moreover, it is not as if the approved regulators are composed exclusively of lawyers. Both the Bar and the Law Society regulatory institutions will have a substantial lay component. Of course, if cogent evidence is already available to the Legal Services Board that a particular rule change is likely to give rise to a net negative impact on the eight objectives, it is a different matter. The philosophy for the Government should be, as I said in Committee, ““Trust the approved regulators?. I beg to move.