Much of the Queen's speech in November has been well flagged. but with the Carter Inquiry gathering steam and some progress on the legal services bill, the next session may yet yield a few wildcards, says John Ludlow


The annual party conference season, which marks the end of the long summer recess, is now over, and MPs are back at their Westminster desks. This is the so-called spill-over, the last few weeks of the session set aside for general tidying up and making sure the one or two remaining bills complete their final stages.



There is still some work for MPs and peers to do, but not a lot. The Companies Bill - now officially the largest piece of legislation ever to wend its way through Parliament - has yet to have its report stage, and amendments are still being tabled. But most in the Westminster village now have their eyes firmly set on the next session, which will begin with the Queen's Speech on 15 November.



In some ways, it seems that the next session has already begun. Because of recent rule changes allowing the progress of bills to be spread over two consecutive sessions, some of next year's measures are already with us. The last few days before the summer recess saw the publication of the controversial Welfare Reform Bill, which will put an end to incapacity benefit, and the awkwardly titled Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill; both will figure prominently in the Queen's Speech. These are known as carry-over bills.



It used to be that the Queen's Speech, like the Budget, was full of surprises. But that is less so today. Apart from the carry-over bills, the increasing use of pre-legislative scrutiny - where bills are published in draft form and then analysed by a select or joint committee, or else put through a further consultation phase - flags up likely inclusions many months in advance.



We may well, for example, see both the Tribunals Courts & Enforcement Bill and the Coroner Reform Bill in November's speech, since both have already been published in draft this session. None of this is certain, of course. Ministers can and do change their minds, and one of the problems, perhaps, of publishing measures in draft is that this can help to crystallise any opposition there might be to a particular reform.



Certainly we would be surprised indeed not to see the Legal Services Bill included in November. Not only has it already been published in draft form, but the usual three months given for pre-legislative scrutiny was curtailed to two by Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) minister Bridget Prentice (much, it must be said, to the joint committee's chagrin). This can only mean that the government is champing at the bit to introduce the Bill proper as early as possible. We can therefore expect it before Christmas.



Pre-legislative scrutiny takes some of the surprise out of the Queen's Speech, but it also undoubtedly makes for better legislation. In the case of the Legal Services Bill, the government has already accepted a number of recommendations made by the joint committee, many of which were suggested by the Law Society. These include agreeing that the need to maintain the independence of the profession should be a regulatory objective and that the proposed legal services board should act in partnership with approved regulators and only intervene whey they are clearly failing. More changes are still needed if this Bill is to deliver a workable system - particularly to ensure that the board is independent of government and operates in a light-touch way - but things are moving in the right direction.



All this must be a credit to the DCA, which appears to be publishing its bills in draft almost as a matter of course. It is a shame, therefore, that the same cannot be said of the Home Office. We expect that department to have at least six bills in the Queen's Speech, but precious few details are yet available of what they will be, beyond the Corporate Manslaughter Bill already published.



The best we can say is that there will probably be something on the management of offenders, something on terrorism, and perhaps another attempt to remove juries from fraud trials. Back in June, the Prime Minister made a speech in Bristol about the need to 'close the gaps' in criminal justice, which some interpreted as a call for a complete overhaul of the system. No more details have been forthcoming, but this does not mean that there will not be a major Criminal Justice Bill in the new session. We will just have to wait and see.



The Queen's Speech means less to the select committees, which routinely carry over their inquiries from one session to the next, unless they relate to specific measures. At the end of July, the ever-busy Constitutional Affairs Select Committee announced a full-scale inquiry into the implementation of the Carter review of legal aid procurement. The date for written submissions has now passed, and it is understood the committee has received more than 200 pieces of evidence.



In its initial statement, the committee openly described Carter as 'controversial', outlining the many 'concerns' that have already been expressed that 'the proposed reforms may have an adverse effect on the provision of legal services'. It is likely to take oral evidence in November and December and we should expect a final report early next year. It should make interesting reading.



John Ludlow is head of the Law Society's parliamentary unit