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Legal Services Bill [HL]

I support the amendment. It concerns proportionality, but proportionality is like a piece of a jigsaw: when this is put together with other amendments to the Bill, it serves, in effect, as a safeguard for the implementation of the Bill in a manner that can retain public confidence. It cannot and ought not to be dealt with in isolation. It is an essential safeguard to the implementation of a Bill that is designed for the control of legal services. If one reads it in context with Amendment No. 3A, which was not moved but which in my respectful opinion is an invaluable amendment—I hope that it will be moved on Report—and if one reads it in context with the public interest amendments to Clause 1 and with Amendments Nos. 32A, 33A, 34, 35 and 46 to 51, one has the pattern to which I speak. The amendment defines parameters within which the discretion of the LSB should be exercised. That is crucial because, as matters stand, it appears to have an absolute discretion, without means of ultimate judicial resolution. The LSB is set up under the aegis of the Secretary of State with a lay majority and a lay chairman. It has an almost absolute administrative discretion affecting approved regulators. Inevitably, some of the decisions of the board would be flawed as regards some of the grounds that have been set out in the judicial review amendments, Amendments Nos. 52 and 139F. It is a worrying situation. The drafting of the amendments to which I have referred—the judicial review amendments on which I shall speak later—will have to be reconsidered in consultation with my noble friends Lord Hunt and Lord Kingsland because to some degree there is an overlap with Amendment No. 3A and with the pattern of amendments to which I have referred. In any event, perhaps the amendments will have to stand as a long stop against rejection of certain other amendments. It is not really acceptable, with or without this pattern of amendments, that the LSB should act as judge and jury in its own cause to control legal services without resort to any form of judicial supervision. I pay tribute to my noble friends Lord Kingsland and Lord Hunt, and to the noble Lords, Lord Thomas and Lord Maclennan of Rogart, for having devised this pattern. It is not easy to unscramble a parson’s egg.