Clause 15

Part of Legal Services Bill [Lords] – in a Public Bill Committee at 10:45 am on 19 June 2007.

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Photo of John Hemming John Hemming Liberal Democrat, Birmingham, Yardley 10:45, 19 June 2007

I would like to go back to the point raised in our previous sitting by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw, which was about industrial relations. He said that, where he is negotiating arrangements for members of his trade union, that is industrial relations and not a legal service.

Regarding the amendments, there is a certain amount of unanimity here, inasmuch as everyone here believes that industrial relations should not be regulated; we are not saying that they should be regulated. I think that everyone here, including the Conservatives, agrees that industrial relations, where one is negotiating on behalf of one’s members, should not be a regulated legal service. By definition in the Bill, it is not a regulated legal service. If everything just continued and the Bill were passed without the amendments, industrial relations would not be a regulated legal service.

If matters reach a certain point, the hon. Member for Bassetlaw and his colleagues in the trade unions put a test case through the courts. They do that by bringing in a firm of solicitors, who then contract barristers. The regulation of those lawyers is through the SRA, the Bar Council, or whatever body it may be, and that is not, in itself, a problem.

A question then arises, and this is where the Minister should clarify the situation: what is the reasoning behind the trade unions’ concern that the whole of a union would become a regulated body? Those are the circumstances that the hon. Member for Bassetlaw would find a problem. If the whole of the trade union becomes a regulated body because it wants to be an ABS, the problem is that the Bill will bring all the negotiations and informal advice by a union convener, wherever it is given, under the remit of the Bill. That is because, although such negotiations or advice are not regulated legal services, the union becomes a regulated legal entity and therefore everything is trapped.

Of course, one solution to that problem is for the trade union to have a subsidiary ABS, if it needs an ABS, so that a clear line is drawn around the regulated entity. That seems to be a tidier solution than this measure, but again it comes down to the details of drafting. One would be concerned, if the union is conducting case handling, such as claims management or whatever it may be, that it be done properly. Obviously, it is possible in those circumstances for the conduct of litigation to be managed within an ABS.