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Public Bodies Bill [HL]

My Lords, first, I declare an interest as chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel, which is part of the Legal Services Board and thus funded indirectly by lawyers, although technically appointed by the Secretary of State. Although we are about to see the LSB dropped from the Bill, I will raise some issues. It will become clear as I speak why I need to do that. The UK has a long and proud record of an independent Bar, and of independent solicitors. This is important for its own sake, but also because the Bar is the pool from which our judiciary is drawn. They are thus already known for their robustness and independence from political influence by the time they don their judicial wigs. Even before that, lawyers can freely represent clients who are prosecuted by the state or even represent clients taking action against the state safe in the knowledge that their licence and freedom to practise cannot be removed by the state, as it was given by the Bar Council or the Law Society, over which the state has no control. It is that security that enables lawyers to feel quite free to represent clients without looking over their shoulder to see whether they will be jeopardising their future livelihood. It is very hard to emphasise how important this tradition has been both here and abroad. There were therefore concerns when it was decided that the role of the Bar Council and the Law Society in authorising and disciplining lawyers was to be overseen, and indeed authorised, by the Legal Services Board, which was set up by statute with its members appointed by an elected politician, or at least a member of the legislature—the Secretary of State. Although I accepted that the era of full self-regulation was past and that some independent membership of relevant boards was required, lawyers here and abroad were wary of the Government taking over ultimate responsibility for effectively granting or removing the licence to practise, with the implication of the regulation of lawyers coming under government control. Nevertheless, when the LSB was set up, albeit funded by lawyers, there were many—I am sure sincere—assurances as to the independence of the Legal Services Board from political interference. Lawyers both here and abroad—because of course many are trained here—were assured that government Ministers would not remove a lawyer who could upset or challenge them. It is very much for that reason that I am delighted about the loss of Clause 11 and Schedule 7, which of course list the LSB. However, in the mean time, another part of government has taken a quite serious swipe at the LSB, as well as my own Legal Services Consumer Panel, and at the new Legal Services Ombudsman set up under the same 2007 Act. On 8 October last year, just days before the 14 October announcement of the bodies to be abolished or amended by this Bill, all three bodies received letters from the Ministry of Justice saying that the Secretary of State had received a letter from Francis Maude, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, telling us that our three independent, stand-alone websites ““will have to be closed”” and that we would need to use ““an approved government website””—in other words, a .gov.uk domain. It will not come as any surprise that all three bodies protested most strongly that, being independent of government, we would not be treated in that way. Elizabeth France, the chair of the Legal Ombudsman, wrote to the Minister of Justice on 25 October saying that there was no justification for an ombudsman, set up to demonstrate independence from government regulation and the profession and spending no government money, having a .gov address. As she stressed, other ombudsmen, whether it be the Local Government Ombudsman, the Pensions Ombudsman or the Financial Ombudsman, all have .org.uk URLs, signifying their independence from the sectors on which they adjudicate and their independence from government. Our three websites cost nothing to the public purse as they are funded by lawyers, so there is no public expenditure rationale for this. However, it raises serious constitutional issues about the independence of the governance of those bodies—something to which the Government seem a little deaf. On 28 February, we had confirmation of the very welcome decision to drop Clause 11 and Schedule 7, as reported at col. 799 of Hansard, and indeed had the Minister’s declaration that: "““The Government absolutely recognise that some public functions need to be carried out independently of Ministers””.—[Official Report, 28/2/11; col. 798.]" Just days after that, on 2 March, guess what? We received another e-mail from the Ministry of Justice telling us, ““You will need to close your website by 31 March 2011””. To my knowledge there is no legal basis for such diktat from the Cabinet Office and there is, of course, no saving of public money. On behalf of the Legal Services Consumer Panel I would be happy to have a hyperlink from a government website to ours to aid navigation, but there is a more serious issue. As with other parts of the legal services architecture, we must not only control the content of our website but also ensure that the public, lawyers and clients—yes, they are prisoners but they are our clients—can give feedback to our consultation and give their views via the website, absolutely confident that that information that they send us via the web will not first be seen by the Government or anyone working for them. If the Government were to come up with a wheeze to close our website, I would prefer us to have no website at all rather than being an arm of the Government’s. I hope it will not come to that, with all its implications for transparency, to say nothing of my role as chair. The Secretary of State, I am sure, would remove me fairly promptly if I were to disobey in those ways. I ask the Minister, therefore—and I have given warning of this—first, is this a new way of exercising control and undermining the independence of a body by finding another route, having discovered that Clause 11 and Schedule 7 are unacceptable to the House? Secondly, are the Government really committed to operational independence of those bodies which were set up to take decisions free of political interference, as the Minister so clearly implied on 28 February? I am sorry to raise this on the very welcome decision to get rid of this schedule, but it seems to me that we need to ensure that the Government are committed to the continuing independent decision-making of those bodies.