Clause 17

Part of Legal Services Bill [Lords] – in a Public Bill Committee at 12:00 pm on 19 June 2007.

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Photo of John Hemming John Hemming Liberal Democrat, Birmingham, Yardley 12:00, 19 June 2007

The hon. Member for Bassetlaw raises another interesting point. If someone is not conducting litigation but merely advising somebody and acting in their own person, that is not a reserved legal activity, so it would not fall under the Bill. Although this is a probing amendment, it is important because the client needs to know at the start of the process whom they are dealing with and under what circumstances. I urge the Minister to consider whether we should confirm more precisely that somebody is regulated by the Legal Services Board, whether they are part of an alternative business structure or of a different organisation, and that they fall inside a particular regulated line.

Another relevant issue is the factors that need to be considered on engagement. I accept that a client engagement letter refers to the rates, how much things might cost and so on. That is important, but should not certain things be included in the Bill? Obviously, I concur with my hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey on such matters. In public family law, in particular, it is common practice for a firm of solicitors to work for both the local authority and the parents. It is not working on the same case, but one day, it works for the parents; the next day, it works for the local authority, and, the day after that, it works for the parents. I am not sure whether that is proper practice, although the Law Society says that it is.

Let us suppose, however, that the clients go to a firm of solicitors expecting it to fight their corner. Having lost their new-born baby, they find out in retrospect that the firm also works for the local authority. The clients should have been told before they started using the firm that it had two masters: themselves and the local authority. Whether that provision should be put into statute is an  interesting question. We have referred to conflicts of interest. We cannot ignore them, however inconvenient they are. The Law Society’s argument is that it would be difficult to find people without conflicts of interest to undertake such work. That is probably not the way in which we should approach matters, so I urge the Minister to consider the problem.