Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Bar Standards Board, which regulates barristers and prohibits the payment of referral fees, which we regard as immoral—I think that I am not putting it too strongly—and which we disapprove of because they are anti-competitive. While I have every respect for my noble friend Lord Martin and for the work that the unions do to help their members, the amendment has brought to mind one of the most reprehensible incidents of modern times relating to lawyers and referral fees. I will not give the House too much detail because it is late at night, and the story is probably well known to noble Lords here, especially noble and learned Lords. When very many miners were sick and 23,000 cases were referred on by the union to a solicitors' firm, it ended up with reprimand and with the law firm taking far more money than did the sick miners. The solicitors were paying the union, and in the case that I am thinking of the amount came to about £10 million, because 23,500 cases were referred to one firm. If a firm of lawyers knows that a number of cases of that order are to be referred to them without the firm making any effort, without it going out into the market and proving how good it is, it is not surprising that things went wrong.