Clause 71
Legal Services Bill [Lords]
8:30 pm
Simon Hughes (Party President, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; North Southwark and Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)
The hon. Gentleman is entitled to take an absolutist view and may be entirely supportive of the Government’s proposals, but that was not the view of the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee, which was concerned about the move from A to B, as he knows. It is not the view of many other people, not all of them lawyers, as he also knows.
I accept that the situation for post offices and lawyers may not be parallel, but in small towns there may be only one legal firm of general competence that has been there for a long time, or a couple of firms that have a good reputation and are well regarded by the community. Of course there will not be queues as there are outside post offices, but there will be a regular procession of clients, who are local people and often without much money, going to see their lawyer if there is a dispute with a neighbour, or a commercial dispute concerning conveyancing, wills, contracts, complaints about holidays that went wrong, and so on. The question is: what is the risk to those firms?