THE SOLICITORS DISCIPLINARY TRIBUNAL (Hansard, 4 July 1974)

§ The Solicitor-General
I beg to move Amendment No. 11, in page 8, line 12, leave out 'under' and insert 'made by virtue of any provision of'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker
With this we are to take Amendment No. 7, in page 8, line 15 at end insert '; but nothing in this subsection shall be deemed to prevent the Law Society investigating complaints of any character prior to the submission of such complaints to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal or a court should such submission eventually prove necessary or desirable.'

§ The Solicitor-General
It may assist the House if I refer first to my hon. Friend's amendment, which is No. 7. I hope that it will not be thought presumptuous if I attempted to anticipate my hon. Friend's arguments.
As I understand it, my hon. Friend wishes to ensure that the Law Society can investigate the treatment of complaints even if the complaint is not of a kind likely to lead to proceedings before the Disciplinary Tribunal. The answer is that the Law Society can make that investigation. There is nothing in the Bill or in the existing legislation to confine the Law Society's right to investigate to any one class of complaint.
It has been normal in the past for the Law Society to investigate complaints which, prima facie, are within the jurisdiction of what is now the Disciplinary Committee and what in future will be the Disciplinary Tribunal, and normally where there is no sanction by the committee or the tribunal and the remedy lies in the court it has not been thought right by the Law Society to intervene in the matter, but that is not invariable.
There have been occasions—for example, when there have been complaints of delay or something of that kind which may not amount to misconduct—on which the Law Society has decided to intervene.
776 It follows that if, in the case of any complaint, the Law Society decides to take no action the lay observer may say publicly 'In this case it ought to have taken action." If experience suggests that in the view of the lay observer the Society should extend the categories of complaint in which it acts, clearly great weight would be given to that view.
Obviously with its present resources it could not undertake an open-ended commitment to investigate every complaint. I hope my hon. Friend will accept that his amendment is unnecessary in the sense I have attempted to describe. If my hon. Friend is troubled by the words complaints under this Act perhaps I should explain that they were not intended to cover all complaints which might be made to the Law Society. The words refer to complaints in the technical sense, which the 1957 Act authorises to be made, and where that Act prescribes a statutory procedure for dealing with them.
It occurred to us in considering what my hon. Friend apparently had in mind that it would be helpful to make it clear that what was intended was a complaint by virtue of the Act. Complaints by the public to the Law Society are not by virtue of any provision in the Act. A member of the public does not require statutory authority to write to the Law Society. These words would not normally include complaints of negligence nor, to use the expression used by my hon. Friend in Committee, cases of a solicitor having made a mistake. That would be a complaint in a non-technical sense. It would be open to the Law Society to investigate any of those if it thought it proper, and where it does not, it would be open to the lay observer to say that in his opinion it should. Amendment 11 is designed to spell out the kind of complaint we have in mind in this clause.

§ Mr. English
I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend. In his usual admirable way, in this upside-down debate, he seems to be answering my points before I have made them. His answer was substantially satisfied me. I tabled this amendment virtually as a probing amendment. Like my hon. and learned Friend, I can understand that the Law 777 Society has not got the resources to deal with all the complaints that pour in. My solution would be to take some of the burden off the Society and place it on the Exchequer, as we have done in the Bill by making the lay observer a charge on the Exchequer.
There was a further problem; namely that solicitors were a bit resistant to dealing with claims of negligence because they were unable to insure themselves in all cases. That, again, has been dealt with in the Bill. I hope, now that some of these stumbling blocks have been taken away, that bit by bit over the next few years we shall be able to persuade the Law Society that, where there is a case of a solicitor having made a mistake, there is no crime or sin in saying so and delicately suggesting that he might pay the client, out of his insurance, some losses which may have been incurred, if it is fairly clear and serious and within the resources of the Society to investigate.
I tabled this amendment because I did not want anyone to say that Clause 11 contradicts the other clause. It did have the phrase. all complaints under this Act whereas the lay observer is entitled to deal with any complaint of whatever nature. I sensed a possible conflict, and I am glad that my hon. and learned Friend has explained that it does not really exist. I of course take his word for that.
I did not want the wording to make the Law Society feel that it did not have the power to investigate a complaint of a mistake. It may not be able to deal with them all, but I did not want the difficulty to be a legal one as well as a question of resources. If my hon. Friend assures me that my amendment is not necessary I am happy to accept his assurance and will not be moving it.