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Parliamentary Standards Bill

I, too, shall endeavour not to detain the Committee overlong. We have before us a range of amendments. The amendments tabled by the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) seem, as others have said, sensible and workable. They represent an improvement to the mechanism of the Bill and I hope that the roll that the right hon. Gentleman is on will continue. I was impressed by some of what the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) said about the availability of informal legal advice—I think that that was the way that he put it. Experience teaches me, however, that legal advice is never informal. One either gets legal advice or one does not. It seems to me that his suggestion, superficially attractive though it is, is a parliamentary equivalent of the legal aid duty solicitor scheme. For many years, I trawled around the police cells of the north and north-east of Scotland as part of that admirable scheme, and although I find the proposal not unattractive, even a legal aid duty solicitor has a direct lawyer-client relationship from which there can be no departure. The standard of service and care, as well as the duty of care, that is owed by the legal aid duty solicitor to the client in the cells is exactly the same as that which would be owed by any City solicitor to a blue-chip client.