§ The Solicitor-GeneralI beg to move amendment No. 31, in page 35, line 33, leave out 'potential' and insert 'prospective'.
This is a technical amendment to ensure consistency throughout the Bill in the nomenclature and use of the word "prospective".
§ Amendment agreed to.
§ Mr. FraserI beg to move amendment No. 91, in page 35, line 38, at end add—
'( ) requiring that any authorised practitioner who is proposing to provide conveyancing services to the public by appointing a qualified person (as defined in section 34(6)) in private practice to act on its behalf in connection with the provision of those services shall only appoint such a person;
- (a) where it selects those persons which it appoints to provide conveyancing services on the basis of objective criteria which relate to the quality of the services available from, and the qualifications held by, those persons and their officers, employees or members;
- (b) where such criteria are not applied in a discriminatory manner; and
- (c) where a statement of such criteria is available on request from the authorised practitioner w all qualified persons who may wish to provide conveyancing services on behalf of that authorised practitioner.'.
The amendment seeks to address the circumstances in which an authorised conveyancing practitioner—that is, one of the banks or building societies which will be receiving almost £1 million per year towards their authorised board to help them out—decides to provide conveyancing services, not through the in-house department but by instructing solicitors or licensed conveyancers in private practice to provide the conveyancing services on behalf of the authorised practitioner—that is, the corporate conveyancer. The danger is that authorised practitioners may select only one or two solicitors in a particular area to provide conveyancing services, which could endanger the survival of other independent solicitors and licensed conveyancers.
The amendment would enable regulations to be made ensuring that authorised practitioners had to select solicitors and licensed conveyancers to act on their behalf on the basis of objective, qualitative criteria and would have to instruct any firm that fulfilled those criteria.
That reflects the present admirable practice of banks and building societies in not discriminating between one firm of solicitors and another. I hope that that practice, which is to the benefit of solicitors and the client, will be continued. Discriminatory selection by one of the new professions of one of the older professions—not the oldest profession—could be damaging.
§ The Solicitor-GeneralWhen dealing with old professions, one should not be discriminatory but one should always be discriminating.
When we discussed this amendment in Committee, I said that I would think about it further. As I said then, the Lord Chancellor's regulations will provide that authorised practitioners must maintain satisfactory standards of competence and conduct in providing services. The 607 regulations make provision to ensure the efficient transaction of business. In that context we have thought about the matter.
Authorised practitioners must bear the requirements in mind when they select a qualified person to act as agent. The Lord Chancellor said recently, however, to the president of the Law Society that it would be a significant advantage to the client to know that solicitors employed as agents by authorised practitioners were fully competent to do the work under the special circumstances that will obtain. Therefore, the Government are prepared to consider whether the regulations—this is how we think that it should be dealt with—should contain criteria for the suitability of solicitor agents.
The existence of the criteria would be a substantial advantage to solicitors who thought they met them and that they were being unfairly or unjustifiably excluded from the lists of those who authorised practitioners choose to work for them.
I do not think that, realistically, we can look for the regulations to do more than that. Decisions on how many solicitors to use as possible agents and which ones must be matters for the commercial judgment of authorised practitioners, provided that all agents meet the standards of service that authorised practitioners will be required to uphold.
As the House will be well aware, the Lord Chancellor has undertaken to consult widely on the regulations and has already asked the president of the Law Society for his views on what criteria should be considered in respect of this matter. I hope that that is a helpful answer which will achieve, as far as possible, in practice—
§ Mr. FraserThat is not a helpful answer because, under the provisions, all the solicitors might come up to standard, but will not be selected.
§ The Solicitor-GeneralI am sorry if my answer was not helpful. We have done our best to think about the matter. It would not necessarily be in the interests of fair competition to attempt to regulate the way in which authorised practitioners, as private businesses, allocated their work. That is an entirely different matter from the allocation of contracts by public authorities. The Government are not likely to be better able than practitioners to guess at appropriate commercial practices. I believe that what the Lord Chancellor has offered to do in relation to the provisions will be of assistance. I am sorry that I cannot offer more than that at present.
§ Amendment negatived.