Clause 1
Legal Services Bill [Lords]
10:45 am
Simon Hughes (Party President, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; North Southwark and Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)
Amendment No. 217 was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley and myself, too. I am conscious that we are not breaking new ground—the matter was discussed in the Lords and on Second Reading.
Clause 1 is a statement of regulatory objectives. Although those objectives are central to the Bill, we must ensure that people understand the principles under which lawyers act, and I have made that point privately to the Minister, her officials, colleagues in the Conservative party and others. We ought to ensure that people understand because the Bill is about the set of principles that govern institutions and bodies such as the Legal Services Board, which is dealt with in clause 2. We should write the Bill so that it is clear that the principles govern the institutions that it creates. I shall come back to the point about structure.
The starting point of the Bill is the list of objectives. They are good objectives and it is good that they are clearly set out. People will be pleased to see that the objectives of
“protecting and promoting the public interest...supporting the constitutional principle of the rule of law...improving access to justice...protecting and promoting the interests of consumers...encouraging an independent, strong, diverse and effective legal profession...increasing public understanding of the citizen’s legal rights and duties”
—that is hugely important—and
“promoting and maintaining adherence to the professional principles”
are set up in lights, as it were, at the beginning.
The amendment deals with the objective of
“promoting competition in the provision of services within subsection (2)”
as stated in paragraph (e). As the hon. Member for Huntingdon said, the amendment would ensure that we get our scale of priorities right. The legal system is a public service, although many practitioners are private, by which I mean barristers and solicitors other than those in the Government’s service or those who are employed by public agencies. Legal service providers are there for two purposes: first, to participate and to ensure that the legal system works well and fairly and, secondly, to represent the people. Those two purposes have to be uppermost in the scale of priorities, beyond the principle set out in paragraph (e).
Of course, the public should be able to choose which solicitors and barristers they use—that is happening increasingly and it is a good thing. However, such choice is not the central, core reason why we have a legal system. People go to legal institutions to seek just and fair answers. It is a bit like the issue of the health service. For me, given my political hinterland, the important thing about the settlement of the post-1945 Attlee Government and the welfare state was that we had a national health service to which everybody had access without having to worry about their finances. Competition among providers of health services to ensure quality of care is not the first principle. We could argue and debate that, but the principle is that everybody should have access to a good-quality health service. The same principle applies to legal services.
Some people in the legal system are directly employed by the public service, including judges, district judges—formerly stipendiary magistrates—and the lay magistracy, whose expenses are paid by the public service. Court staff are public servants, so they are outwith this debate. Other people can become involved in public service when they step into the legal system or do anything involving the courts. Giving advice at the beginning does not necessarily involve the courts, but once they are involved a public service is being supported.
John Mann rose—