OVERTURN: government determined to counter amendments made to the Legal Services Bill


The government this week pledged to reverse the major amendments made to the Legal Services Bill in the House of Lords, accusing peers of losing sight of consumers' interests.



Though the Ministry of Justice has accepted some amendments - most notably the addition of protecting the public interest to the overarching regulatory principles - minister Bridget Prentice told the Commons during the Bill's second reading that she intended to overturn others, such as requiring the Lord Chancellor to appoint the legal services board (LSB) only with the concurrence of the Lord Chief Justice.



The determination to leave the appointment in the hands of the Lord Chancellor, subject to the Nolan principles of public appointment, comes despite a letter to Ed Balls, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, from the senior partners of Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Freshfields, Allen & Overy, and Slaughter and May, and Geoffrey Vos QC, chairman of the Bar Council. It warned that the proposal risks compromising at least the impression of lawyers' independence from government, which could have a negative impact on City firms' competitiveness abroad.



Ms Prentice also said she would seek to refine amendments which sought to make explicit the oversight nature of the LSB and reverse the amendment that would require licensing authorities to consider the likely impact on access to justice of an application to form an alternative business structure (ABS) before deciding whether to grant it. She said it should not have precedence over the other regulatory principles.



The minister will also seek to overturn the 'sunrise' clause that prohibits the introduction of ABSs until an independent report into their impact is commissioned, together with the Bar Council-inspired amendment allowing the office for legal complaints to delegate the handling of service complaints back to frontline regulators. The latter 'defeats the whole purpose of this part of the Bill', she said, adding however that the improvement made in recent times by the Legal Complaints Service under Professor Shamit Saggar 'has been remarkable'.



However, the government is to bring forward amendments sought by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to allow the latter to fine and publish rebukes against solicitors.



Ms Prentice added: 'The consumer focus, as the volume and nature of amendments in [the House of Lords] show, was clearly forgotten during the Bill's long and drawn-out six-month passage there, so I now look forward to this House reacquainting the Bill with its real purpose.'



Both Conservative and Liberal Democrat spokesmen called on the government to respect the amendments passed by the Lords, saying they were in line with both the Clementi report and that of the joint parliamentary committee which scrutinised the draft Bill last summer.



Labour MP Adrian Bailey, a non-lawyer, observed that 'overall, the debate has been legally driven and legally dominated'. He suggested that it would be a 'rather different Bill' had the process been dominated by consumer representatives.



Neil Rose