---

Probate Services (Approved Bodies) Order 2008

I have reservations about this order. Probate is a difficult and challenging area of the law. It can be successful if it is simple, but it can lead to long delays, particularly if it involves the administration of trusts under a will or matters of that sort. It is a much more complicated area than conveyancing, and indeed quite a long way removed from accountancy. It is right, therefore, that the Government should have made necessary inquiries before bringing this order forward. What is not apparent is, for example, the track record of the Council for Licensed Conveyancers. Have there been complaints, and has its compensation fund been used in relation to conveyancing? Another matter to which I draw the Committee’s attention is that the Legal Services Consultative Panel did not immediately give a clean bill of health to the Council for Licensed Conveyancers and thought it desirable that it should have a separate fund to deal with compensation for probate matters as opposed to the existing conveyancing fund. However, since that recommendation was made, the Government have for some reason agreed, and by order enacted, that the existing conveyancing compensation scheme should be extended to cover the new area of responsibility. If the organisation’s record—nothing in the Legal Services Consultative Panel’s advice makes it clear—is that there have been few complaints and no significant attacks on the compensation fund, then well and good. However, I should like to know the position. The other matter that causes me some disquiet is why the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland should be seeking powers to deal with probate in England and Wales. There are quite different and separate jurisdictions in Scotland and Wales, and the area of the law covering probate and trust is quite different in Scotland from the system in England and Wales. As I said, accountants are fairly well removed from this area anyway, so why do they want to extend their business into England and Wales? What training will they have in these aspects of English and Welsh law which will be satisfactory? In the long term, all may prove to be fine. On behalf of my party, however, I wish to put down a marker that these extensions of business should not be accepted without the most rigorous consideration of the standing and record of the one fairly new organisation, the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, and the longstanding record of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland whose members are coming across the border to take the business of practitioners in England and Wales without, so far as I can see, any reason appearing on the papers which have been put before us. I voice these reservations in the hope that if the Minister cannot respond to them today, he will be able to do so before this draft statutory instrument is brought before the whole Chamber and its implementation is sought.