NHS Redress Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 35:"Page 4, line 18, leave out ““a”” and insert ““one or more than one””" The noble Earl said: My Lords, my purpose in tabling this amendment is not to baffle the Minister but to flag up a matter which we debated briefly in Grand Committee; namely, who, or which body, will hold the list of solicitors authorised under the redress scheme to provide legal advice? In Grand Committee, the Minister indicated the Government’s intention to entrust this role to the Legal Services Commission because this was the best way, in his view, of guaranteeing to patients that they would receive advice and services of an appropriate standard. I feel that I must challenge that rationale. The LSC is, of course, a highly respectable non-departmental public body. However, its role is not to accredit solicitors who have experience in the clinical negligence field. In fact, it can hardly be said to accredit solicitors in any sense at all other than by reference to their employment and management procedures and to their experience in legal aid. The list held by the Legal Services Commission is in fact a list of practitioners who hold a legal aid franchise. That list is rather different from the list that I think most of us want, which is a list of clinical negligence specialists. Not all clinical negligence specialists have a franchise with the Legal Services Commission. If the Government follow through their intention to give the LSC this responsibility, they will be doing one thing—restricting unnecessarily the pool of available solicitors qualified in the field. That, I suggest, would be a retrograde step. I mentioned in Grand Committee that currently there are two recognised lists of clinical negligence lawyers: one is held by the Law Society; the other by AvMA—Action against Medical Accidents. What is wrong with the idea of entrusting these two bodies with the joint responsibility of holding the list? I beg to move.