Clause 83
Legal Services Bill [Lords]
9:00 am
Bridget Prentice (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Justice; Lewisham East, Labour)
I beg to move Government amendment No. 7, in clause 83, page 48, line 24, leave out paragraph (e).
I hope that we can deal with the amendment reasonably swiftly. It will reverse an amendment that was made in the Lords, which would require licensing authorities to pay particular attention to access to justice when considering alternative business structure licences. I have no quarrel with the spirit of that amendment; we take seriously access to justice, as Baroness Ashton explained in the other place. It has been one of the regulatory objectives since the Bill was drafted.
Clause 82 requires the authority to issue policy statements on how it will consider the regulatory objectives, including access to justice, when carrying out its licensing functions. That will include the consideration of applications for ABS licences. We do not want the reforms in the Bill to make access to justice more difficult. Indeed, I would not have introduced such measures if that were their effect. I am confident that the forms of service provision enabled through part 5 will actually improve access and encourage new methods of service delivery. Providers will have to try harder to reach consumers and to provide for their needs.
The measure will deliver more joined-up provision, because different kinds of professionals will be able to work together on integrated services in a one stop shop setting. It will also stimulate competition, which consumers will welcome, as it should bring prices down. I am confident that licensing authorities will be mindful of the need to improve access to justice and will do whatever is necessary to avoid harmful effects. They will be able to refuse licences if they think that the effect of granting a licence would be damaging, and they will be able to impose conditions on licences. I differ from the Bill as amended on whether access to justice needs to be singled out to ensure that licensing authorities take it into account. I am confident that it does not; clause 28 already ensures that they will take account of the regulatory objectives, which include access to justice.
I acknowledge that alternative business structures are new and therefore carry new risks. There was argument in the other place over whether the firms that might be likely to go into legal services under part 5 would cherry-pick profitable services and leave solicitors to survive on the less profitable work. The purpose of the amendment that was made in the other place was to require licensing authorities to give sufficient weight to access to justice when considering licensing.
The problem with that provision is that it inevitably puts access to justice ahead of all the other objectives. It does not mention the other objectives, nor does it require licensing authorities to balance access against them, which naturally means that access would be interpreted as carrying greater weight than the other objectives. The licensing authorities would therefore inevitably treat access as more important, if only to protect themselves from legal challenges for not having taken it properly into account. That might not sound too bad, but the problem is that it risks putting the other objectives second.
It may be that an ABS licence will benefit the consumer because of the other objectives. For example, the objective of increasing competition might promote consumers’ interests. Those considerations make it acceptable to make a small reduction in the extent to which access to justice is a nose ahead of everything else. Effectively, the Bill could turn a condition that no decision could ever adversely affect access to justice in any way, no matter how beneficial that might be, into the reality. I do not think that that is what we want.
Another issue that has been brought to my attention is that the measure may be an attempt by some in the legal world to protect their own interests, rather than a consideration of consumers’ interests as paramount.