Clause 17

Part of Legal Services Bill [Lords] – in a Public Bill Committee at 11:45 am on 19 June 2007.

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Photo of Simon Hughes Simon Hughes Shadow Attorney General, Party Chair, Liberal Democrats 11:45, 19 June 2007

I beg to move amendment No. 269, in clause 17, page 8, line 22, at end insert—

‘(4) All persons claiming to be entitled to carry on any activity which is a reserved legal activity shall have a duty to make clearly known to each client, at the beginning of their dealings with each other—

(a) their professional title and qualifications; and

(b) the most senior member of the firm to whom they are accountable.’.

As the Minister knows, I have trailed this amendment; it complements the clause that we are about to debate. It is a good clause in that it makes it clear that somebody who holds himself out as being entitled to act as a solicitor, even though he is not, is committing a criminal offence. If we are to have a reputable set of professions, it is important that we do not let people get away with pretending to be something that they are not. Although such cases might not be as publicly odious as those of the people whom we occasionally discover practising as doctors, gynaecologists and others when they are not, this is an important matter. People could be badly misled and lose a huge amount of money if they took legal advice from somebody who was incompetent and unqualified to give it.

The amendment is designed to make it a bit clearer to consumers who they will be dealing with when they go into the world of dealing with lawyers, who are the people regulated by the clause. It is therefore self-explanatory, although I do not pretend that it is perfectly drafted. I am keen that the Minister should be sympathetic to it and, in her usual considered way, take it away and think about how we might achieve that objective. I say that not because I have a theoretical obsession about the issue, but because I know that it is a matter of practical concern.

I know that some, if not many, people will have come to you, Mr. Cook, in your surgery or elsewhere, saying that they have been to see a solicitor or similar, yet when you have looked at their papers you have discovered that they have had no dealings or communication with anybody who is legally qualified. All the people with whom they have dealt have had lesser, or even no, qualifications; some might have been students or new trainees. I do not disparage the work that such people do, but I am keen that people should know with whom they are dealing.

There are examples of good practice and good conduct, and of solicitors who give good advice. However, we are not considering good solicitors. A reputable, long-standing south London firm with which I have dealt, as have my constituents and those who represent them, is Anthony Gold. It is committed to good legal work and community support. It has taken on new areas of work such as housing law and the cases of people who want to take their local authority to court, as well as personal injury and such things. It has a very good reputation. If one   goes to see it, one is contacted in writing when one’s engagement with it is confirmed. The person writing explains his role within the firm, names the principal to whom he is accountable and says what to do if one has a complaint. That is good practice and it is done by most firms. It should be done by all firms.

However, I can think of an immigration case that went badly wrong when one of my constituents went to a small firm and dealt with somebody whom he believed to be a qualified lawyer with competence in immigration and asylum matters. The person was not a qualified lawyer and, as I discovered when I inherited the case, had no competence. The Government rightly introduced a new system for regulating people who give immigration advice, which was welcome. An agency was set up to deal with it. I am sure the Minister understands my general point—we are trying to ensure that there is some onus.

It may be that the matter would be better governed by requiring the professional bodies, to which we will come in a minute, to place a duty on all the people who work for them. However, some people slip through the net by not belonging to any of those professional bodies. To take a ridiculous example, somebody who works for a very reputable firm—or a less reputable one—without being legally qualified in any way is the cleaner. It is ridiculous but it is not impossible that one day, a rush of blood might go to the head, somebody might come through the door and the cleaner, the last one left in the office, might decide to try their hand in giving legal advice. If they are creditable, who knows? The person might well leave thinking that they have been given good advice.

I can think of one example of somebody—I defended him many years ago—who was wonderful at persuading people that he was who he said he was. He went around to lots of establishments in London pretending that he came from the environmental health department. He was very good at lying. He would go to inspect a kebab shop or a Chinese takeaway, and on every occasion he would find a dead mouse or rat. That was not surprising, as he had just it put it there. Then, of course, he charged rather a large sum not to report it. He lived comfortably for a long time, commuting regularly every week from his family in Scotland to his job in London. [Interruption.]He was English; let me not malign the Scots. He had a girlfriend and a child in Scotland, so he would fly up on a Friday, fly down on a Monday and do the job.