Clause 15
Legal Services Bill [Lords]
11:00 am
Bridget Prentice (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Justice; Lewisham East, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman can try to scratch at this to see whether he can draw blood; but, frankly, I do not think that he can. The Department had discussions with the TUC and the Law Society on the matter. In recent weeks, I had discussions with Opposition Front Benchers and talked through the measures proposed in the House of Lords that I wanted to change. My noble Friend Baroness Ashton also kept the Opposition up to date when she was taking the Bill through the House of Lords. We are where we are on such matters.
Other bodies will be able to take advantage of a similar exemption. If a body provides reserved legal activities only to its members, it will be exempt under clause 15. Clause 15(4) exempts bodies when the
“provision of...services to the public”
is not part of their business.
To answer the point made by the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey, we had to make specific reference to trade unions to address the specific issues that relate to them. For example, the legislation must make it clear that only independent trade unions may benefit from the changes. Independent trade unions had to be mentioned because of their specific legislative position, but it is possible for other membership organisations to be exempted. On the other hand, bodies such as the Co-op are much more likely to want to make their services available to the general public, in which case they will must go through the full regulatory system. Subsection (4) makes it clear that as long as
“services to the public”
are not part of an organisation’s “business”, it will not have to be authorised.
I shall come shortly to the points made by my hon. Friends the Members for Bassetlaw and for North Durham.