Schedule 1
Legal Services Bill [Lords]
5:15 pm
Simon Hughes (Party President, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; North Southwark and Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)
The reason why the appointment should be different is that the board will regulate an entirely different part of public life: the system that holds the scales, not a bit of a DCMS quango. The Minister will not be able to give me an answer to the following question now, but it is cheaper than tabling a written question. Will she let us have a list of all the joint appointments? She has given us some of the single appointments. Can she tell us why the answer to the question that has been bouncing around is that the person appointed jointly cannot go through the same process of being drawn from the Commissioner for Public Appointments’ pool as easily as anybody else, which guarantees that there will not be a single party political appointment? That has all the benefits and none of the disbenefits?