Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

I began my speech by informing the house how contingency fee agreements came about. Because the Secretary of State has merely repeated that, I will penalise the Minister by taking a minute off his time. The Secretary of State believes that there are faults in the current system whereby lawyers are unjustly enriched—he may be right, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and I, and many other hon. Members, would probably agree with him—but let us cure those faults. Let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater.