COMMONS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 14 July 1999)

§ The Lord Chancellor
My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 7. I shall speak also to Amendments 405 Nos. 8, 24 and 25 and state the position I should have adopted had the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, moved his Amendment No. 7A.
The purpose of Amendments Nos. 7, 8, 24 and 25 is to confer on the legal services commission a power to charge both for the accreditation and monitoring of providers of legal services and for the authorisation of others to accredit and monitor providers of legal services.
The amendments will also allow others who are authorised to accredit and monitor providers of legal services to charge for accreditation and monitoring in accordance with terms set by the commission. They give the Lord Chancellor the power to require the commission to discharge its powers to charge for accreditation, monitoring and authorisation and to authorise others to charge in a prescribed manner.
The government amendments are enabling provisions, which give the commission a power to charge for accreditation services. Accreditation lies at the heart of the Government's drive to create a network of quality assured suppliers of legal services. Accreditation will show to funders and clients that a particular body meets certain standards in its work. Not all will pay for accreditation.
I come now to what I believe will be of most interest to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury. I deal first with services provided as part of the criminal defence service. These will be provided by solicitors' firms, typically under a contract, barristers and possibly by some not-for-profit law centres. All services provided as part of the criminal defence service will be funded by the commission and providers will not have to pay for accreditation.
I turn separately to services funded by the commission as part of the community legal service. These services will be provided by solicitors and barristers who will be in business for profit and by not-for-profit agencies such as law centres and citizens advice bureaux, which will not. Suppliers of services funded by the commission as part of the community legal service will not have to pay for accreditation. Therefore, the high street solicitor, or indeed any solicitor, providing services as part of the criminal defence service or the community legal service which are funded by the legal services commission will not have to pay for accreditation. I believe that is what the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, anticipated that he would hear from me.
I turn to those who will provide the other help and advice not funded by the commission but which will be available through the wider community legal service. Many of these providers will be operating on a not-for-profit basis and they will not have to pay for accreditation. But there are many organisations that make a profit from the provision of legal services. These include firms of solicitors operating on a purely private basis in either civil or criminal matters. We hope that many of these firms will take part in their local community legal service networks as part of the referral network, even if they are not receiving funding under a 406 contract with the commission. Solicitors firms and others providing legal services for a profit may choose to take advantage of the opportunity to obtain accreditation to demonstrate the quality of the services that they provide and thereby attract more business; or they may be required by regulators or client groups to meet quality standards. That may be particularly appropriate in the field of immigration advice where there is concern about the quality of services provided.
The commission will be well placed to accredit, or authorise others to accredit, profit-making providers of legal services—I repeat, which it does not fund—and to ensure that appropriate and consistent quality standards are applied across the field of legal services.
We believe that it would be wrong to expect the taxpayer to meet the costs of accrediting and monitoring those individuals and bodies who seek accreditation as a means of increasing their profits arising out of non-publicly funded work.

§ Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord the Lord Chancellor for giving way. He referred to cases which the legal services commission does not fund. There are, of course, two ways in which it can fund: either it funds the individual who then obtains legal aid services from a firm of solicitors or it can fund the firm direct. That is borne out in Clauses 14 and 15 of the Bill. I understand the noble and learned Lord to be saying—indeed, it would be logical—that whichever form of legal aid funding is obtained, whether to the individual or to the solicitors' firm which provides services to the client, either way there will not be a charge for accreditation and monitoring.

§ The Lord Chancellor
My Lords, that is certainly my understanding. The power for the commission to charge for accreditation services where the firm in question seeks accreditation for the purposes of promoting its business outside funded work is in a different category. But it is right to charge for such accreditation services and it will be for the public benefit because the consumer will have the advantage of an assurance of the quality of the service without the taxpayer having to foot the bill for accreditation.
However, wherever the commission seeks to exercise this power within the limits that I have described, it will simply be seeking to recover its costs in providing the service and not to make a profit. I hope that that is a sufficient explanation of the Government's intentions from these provisions.