§ Mr. Austin Mitchellasked the Attorney-General how many of the recommendations for change made by the last Royal Commission on legal services in England have been implemented to date.
§ The Attorney-GeneralThe White Paper "The Government Response to the Report of the Royal Commission on Legal Services" (Cmnd. 9077) published in November 1983 set out how matters then stood on the recommendations for which the Government are responsible. Of the matters then still under consideration, recommendation 9.3, which advocated access to a solicitor by persons taken into custody, will be implemented when section 58 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 comes into force on 1 January 1986, and recommendation 9.11, which pressed for legal representation to be available to prisoners in certain disciplinary proceedings, was implemented in April 1984. The Administration of Justice Bill presently before Parliament will, in the context of the extension of the right to undertake conveyancing for reward to properly qualified non-solicitors, implement recommendation 21.3 in part by extending the restrictions on conveyancing for reward to the preparation of the contract and will implement recommendation 21.4 by empowering local authority trading standards departments to institute proceedings for breach of the conveyancing restrictions. The Bill will also implement recommendation 16.4(a), by empowering the Lord Chancellor to reimburse from public funds costs thrown away by the death or incapacity of a judge, and 540W recommendation 25.13, by transferring the jurisdiction of the legal aid complaints tribunals to the profession's disciplinary tribunals.