Clause 31
Legal Services Bill [Lords]
4:30 pm
John Mann (PPS (Rt Hon Richard Caborn, Minister of State), Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Bassetlaw, Labour)
I beg to move amendment No. 279, in clause 31, page 15, line 22, after (a) insert—
‘(za) investigate the performance by an approved regulator of any of its regulatory functions.’.
The amendment is helpful to the Government’s objectives and I am keen to offer it to the Minister. As do the Government, I regard light-touch self-regulation as the way forward. To demonstrate that, we need to ensure that the lightest of touches is highly effective. I make an analogy with a surgeon: the legal profession does not require an 18th century surgeon removing arms and legs in traditional ways to get to the root of the problem; it requires small amounts of microsurgery, involving the latest laser technology, to ensure accuracy and precision. That is the point of the amendment.
If the regulators use too blunt or too heavy an instrument, the result will be vague and will cast aspersions on the profession overall. They will fail properly to identify the precise problems and to rectify them through effective regulation. In that respect, intervention from on high, to ensure that performance is of the highest standards, has proved most useful. I cite as an example the legal services ombudsman’s special report on miners’ compensation, which highlighted a number of minor inconsistencies. They were grabbed by the regulator, which totally outpaced the ombudsman in delivering an effective, consistent system and moved in a tiny period of time from agreat variety of responses—some of them absolutely superbly detailed and legally precise, some rather waffly, vague and inaccurate—to a consistency of approach that meant that those who were complaining could begin to see consistency in judgments, and gain confidence in the system.
The regulator needs to be able to examine performance as it is happening, not merely retrospectively. Then, if there is a swathe of problems in a certain area, the regulator can improve the consistency and quality of performance in actual time, rather than retrospectively. Such strengthening of the ability to intervene on a light-touch, microsurgical basis would be entirely in the spirit of the Government’s successful attempts to introduce self-regulation.