Legal Services Bill [HL]

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 5:43 pm on 18 April 2007.

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Photo of Baroness Ashton of Upholland Baroness Ashton of Upholland Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Constitutional Affairs) 5:43, 18 April 2007

My Lords, I am grateful for the explanation that the noble Lord has given, but I am not persuaded that I want to go further. The noble Lord was gracious in seeing that I had responded to the comments made in Committee and in our conversations with the Law Society and the Bar Council. We do not want to see the fining power in the same category as the powers to intervene directly with approved regulators or to cancel an approved regulator's designation. Those are very different, but that would be the effect of Amendment No. 135. We do not believe that the fining power is of the same order of magnitude.

On a more practical level, the amendment would reduce the board's ability to make a flexible response to a regulatory failure. The argument in the Macrory review, as noble Lords will know, is that the move is towards greater flexibility where sanctions are used. We have already said many times in the passage of this legislation that we hope that these sanctions will not be used. However, where they are used, the argument is to enable those using them to have the greatest possible flexibility to use the most appropriate sanction at any given time.

I indicated that, in our discussions with consumer groups, they expressed great concern that we should not constrain the fining power because they saw it as an important part of a regulator's toolkit, which, if it were to be used, would send the clear and important message that the regulator was willing to act on their behalf.

We believe that we again have the right balance. We have made a move to accept in part what the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, said in Committee about my previous amendments following discussions with the regulatory bodies, but it is important to retain flexibility and, therefore, we must ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.