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Legal Services Bill [HL]

My Lords, this is an important issue, because we are on the threshold of these alternative business structures. It is clear in Part 5 that if there is a conflict between what the shareholders want and what the regulator wants, the regulator will always prevail. At Report stage, the noble Baroness for the first time appeared to raise doubts that the DTI had, in turn, raised with her regarding the outcome of any conflict. There would be extremely serious implications for the operation of the ABS system if there were circumstances in which shareholders could override regulators. Indeed, that would undermine the basis on which the Government and the Opposition parties had been dealing with the Bill.