Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

This is another important amendment and I would like to support my noble friend Lord Beecham, who has moved it. If the Government suggest that caveat emptor is a sufficient answer to the case made by my noble friend, they would be wrong. If the Government say that it is simply up to the consumer not to buy shoddy goods or not to avail themselves of shoddy professional services, it will not do—particularly in the provision of services. Professional self-regulation is not always all that it ought to be. Although we should always guard against the assumption that things are not what they used to be—a view that we are a little bit liable to become attached to in your Lordships' House—none the less, I think it is fair to say that the professional ethic has become somewhat attenuated over recent decades. We see, for example, the advertising of professional services in ways that we did not in the past. We see the marketisation of professional services, arising in part out of contracting out, and the general widespread extension of market values and market practices, which in many cases have led to greater efficiency and greater availability of services. However, they also carry the risk that those who offer these services may become a degree less scrupulous when the ethos is that of the market. People find themselves beset by parasitic professionals. The purveyors of subprime mortgages may have been the most offensive instance in recent years that one can imagine, but there are many other cases. It will not do to leave the ordinary citizen vulnerable to predatory, grubby and dishonest so-called professionals. The issue of equality of arms that arose in the previous debate on employment law arises here, too, because the ordinary citizen may come up against professionals, or those who represent them, who are highly articulate, able to speak the jargon of a specialised field and can afford expensive advice. It must be an elementary principle that there is access to justice on sufficient equal terms to enable citizens who have been poorly, dishonestly or improperly served by professional advisers to have some remedy.