Schedule 13
Legal Services Bill [Lords]
10:15 am
Simon Hughes (Party President, Cross-Portfolio and Non-Portfolio Responsibilities; North Southwark and Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)
I strongly support the amendment, which is why I have put my name to it. I give as my reason an example from a slightly different context. When Labour came to office, the London borough of Southwark was still run by the Labour party. At that stage, the education service was not fit for purpose. The Labour Government intervened and directed the borough to contract out its education service. The borough contracted it out to an engineering firm called WS Atkins, although, to my knowledge, the firm had no previous experience of running anything to do with education. The Government said that that would be better for the borough. Arguably, the service could not have become any worse, but, in fact, it turned out to be no better, if not worse, because WS Atkins did not have the competence to run the service.
When my colleagues won a large number of seats on the council five years ago, they formed the first ever non-Labour administration. In four years the authority did so well on education that even the Government had to concede that it was fit to run the service again. The service was handed back to it and WS Atkins was shown the door. The services in the borough are now run by the borough, as they should be.
I hope that the parallel is obvious. An application was made to do a job, but no one assessed whether the applicant was fit for purpose. The amendment would require that someone who was seeking the ability to be licensed to own a business in the context of these business structures should have to give reasons why they were fit to do that job. It should not be sufficient for the authority to have to look around for reasons why a person was not fit. Such a person should argue why they have a credible reputation and financial probity and why they are suitable, and outline their experience of that part of the country and the likely issues that will come up.
It is absolutely right that the burden should shift. There would be a huge work load on the licensing authority if it had to go through the process of monitoring all the checks and balances and ensuring that it won the argument. The amendment is right for both practical reasons and reasons of principle. I hope that the Minister will be persuaded to encourage her colleagues to support it.