Clause 4
Compensation Bill [Lords]
3:15 pm
Simon Hughes (Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs & Shadow Attorney General, Constitutional Affairs; North Southwark and Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)
On amendment No. 20, I assume that the Minister will say that this is the normal drafting for such things. However, I agree with the purport behind it, which is that we need to get on.
On amendment No. 25, the Minister knows that our view is that the FSA, although a prospective candidate, would not be the logical regulator—whether it has said that it wanted to do so is a separate question—and that the logical regulator is the regulator in the wings, coming through in the draft Legal Services Bill. I accept that it is better to have an interim arrangement and then hand it over to that regulatory body, because there is a closer affinity between the services that lawyers purport to offer and these sorts of services, rather than those currently regulated by the FSA and these services.