Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

This is a very interesting amendment and in many ways I am very much for it. However, I am concerned about the point that the noble Baroness made about informed consent and having been able to consult someone. That was one of my major worries during my time in tribunals. People set themselves up as ““employment consultants””—I suppose that I could describe them as cowboys. They found their clients the moment that the case was filed, because it is on public record. It used to be that if they went to Bury St Edmunds they could see the total case—every word of it; now that it is all on line they can probably only get the name, address and contact. Even so, they then tout for business, and very often the person approached by those consultants has no idea that they are not an authority on anything and have no real experience or understanding of the case. We saw case after case in which self-appointed so-called experts did very badly for their clients. They were not legally qualified, but the person employing them had no idea whether they were or not. The legal qualification may not be so necessary—and now these people are regulated. If you receive a fee, you are meant to be regulated. But there is still no way in which to confirm for the simple-type applicant that the person is or is not registered; they do not know that they are supposed to be, so they do not check. That really concerns me. It is very important, with a proposal such as this one, in situations where people are relying on independent advice, that there should be a clear way in which to establish that the independent advice is at least soundly based.