Legal Services Bill [HL]

rose to move, as an amendment to the Motion that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment 72, leave out ““agree”” and insert ““disagree””. The noble Lord said: The amendment would restore to the Bill a provision that was agreed here on more than one occasion by votes; namely that Part 5 should not be brought into operation without further examination and report. I should place it on the record that I was a member of the Joint Committee that considered the Bill. When I heard the Minister say that he was coming fresh to it, I rather envied him. Over the past 18 months, I seem to have done little else but think about the Legal Services Bill. Following the evidence that we managed to put together under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, on that committee, I took the view that a case had not been made for why the extraordinarily wide provisions in Part 5 were necessary. We are talking about lawyers getting together with all sorts of other professions in various possible permutations of professional organisations. Over and above that, there is the possibility of funding by outside people and ownership by outsiders who would have no legal or other professional qualification whatever. That was an alarming prospect. The amendment would ensure that that did not happen until the matter had been reviewed. One of the main concerns has been talked about earlier today; the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, mentioned it. A good deal of evidence came out in Committee in your Lordships' House of the anxiety about the effect of Part 5 on access to justice. The note that struck a chord with everyone concerned what would happen to a couple of high-street solicitors in a small town if a bigger legal enterprise decided to open a wider partnership that involved all sorts of things in addition to law. No work that we could detect had been done on the social consequences of that policy. The most potent spokesman for that anxiety was the former Lord Chief Justice, my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf. He said that devastating consequences could follow from the introduction of Part 5 unless people were aware of what they might be. The House heard contributions from other parts of the country. Wales was singled out and the Midlands and the north were mentioned by Members of this House who were able to relate personal conversations that they had had with local solicitors and others reflecting considerable concern about the effect of the Bill if enacted. Another disturbing aspect came from the foreign legal profession. The German Federal Bar, the BRAK, has a large association that represents about 100,000 members. It wrote to the committee saying, ““We put you on notice that no German lawyer would be allowed to have anything to do with a firm that is organised in the way envisaged or made possible by the Bill””, with outside shareholders and so forth. It would be regarded by the German legal profession and German law as totally unprofessional to be associated with any such body. That was in just one country. We made no inquiry into any other countries. Noble Lords may recall a story. One of our protests in the report, which was made by the chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was that we were given only four weeks from start to finish to produce a report. The amount of independent inquiry that we could make was virtually zero—we got together just a few home witnesses. The amendment that I introduced in the Lords in the spring was voted on with big support from the opposition parties and found a place on the statute book. It called for a delay and a detailed report investigating the access to justice matter and the views of the foreign legal profession, so that we would have some feel for whether we were doing something wholly bizarre, avant-garde or rather good. That amendment was carried by the House. It was struck out at a very early stage in the other place; I did not follow it thereafter, but it did not surface again. We got the Bill back on Tuesday morning and we find that the provision about delay is no longer there. I therefore tabled this amendment to restore the position to where I believe it ought to be. I am not, as it were, trading assurances, but the minimum I want to hear the Minister say, if he is able to do so, is that this matter will be kept under close review; that, having got the Bill through, the Government will not close their eyes to the effect; that they will watch the economic effect in various parts of the country with an open mind; and that they will report back if there is information which shows that the fears I have expressed are correct. One would also hope that during the next five years, the Government would have better information on the attitude of foreign countries to the experiments taking place in this country. As I say, that is the minimum. I wait to hear what any other Members of the House have to say. I do not know whether your Lordships require me to read out the detail of the proposal. In essence, it was that there should be a wide-ranging report by an independent body, which should be brought back to both Houses for discussion and voting on before Part 5 is introduced. That is the guts of it. I beg to move. Moved, as an amendment to the Motion that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 72, leave out ““agree”” and insert ““disagree””.—(Lord Neill of Bladen.)