Clause 56
Legal Services Bill [Lords]
6:45 pm
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley, Liberal Democrat)
This is not an amendment that the Liberal Democrats can support. It shows a certain amount of confusion about how to enforce the legislation. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman was necessarily talking about the idea that it might become a criminal offence to disobey the legal services, but the difficulty then becomes how to enforce the proposed measures. One would have to apply to the High Court for an order. Failure to comply with that order would be contempt of court and enforced accordingly, so if the Committee passed the amendment, we would not be getting anywhere, as it will be possible in practice to go to the High Court quickly if that is required. The files to which the hon. Gentleman referred would probably be held by an individual firm, not a regulator.
I agree that there have been situations in which self-regulation has failed, and that there needs to be pressure on regulators such as the General Medical Council to do their job properly. Judicial review has been used to enforce that on the GMC—a court order is obtained, and the GMC obeys—but that is not the sort of thing that happens within the time scales that the hon. Gentleman is thinking of. To that extent, the amendment is misguided.