House of Commons Hansard Debates for 18 Apr 1990

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At local authority level, law centres, advice centres, citizens advice bureaux and other agencies that provide necessary advice for local people are being squeezed.

Our system of justice does not exist merely to feed barristers and solicitors or to provide employment for court clerks. The courts and the professions exist to enable ordinary people to obtain justice. Justice must never be seen to be cost-effective, but it must be administered effectively. There is still genuine anger that the law is expensive both in time and money, inaccessible, favours the privileged, conducts itself in jargon, supports monopolies, is remote and is conducted by lawyers for lawyers. Our duty as legislators is to put an end to those excesses. That will not happen with this Bill, but given good will in Committee we may set out on the right road. I warn the House at this early stage that without the proper resources the journey will not even begin.

9.15 pm

Mr. Michael Irvine (Ipswich) : I decline to follow my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) in his doom-laden and over-lugubrious approach to the Bill. I want every bit as much as he does to maintain an independent and strong Bar, which is the key to the Government's intention of providing more choice to the litigant. Without a strong and independent Bar, the litigant's choice will be diminished. With it, it will be enhanced.

Where I differ from the diagnosis of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton is that I believe that the Bar is robust enough to stand up to the extra measure of competition that the Bill will bring. Of all the professions, the Bar is probably the most competitive. There is competition to get good pupillages, competition to get into good sets of chambers, competition between sets of chambers and competition between members of chambers. The Bar is a robust profession and is well able to take care of itself. However, I have one anxiety that is shared by many fellow barristers. It relates to the recruiting activities of the major City firms of solicitors. They are anxious to recruit the brightest and the best from the Bar, and they have deep pockets with which to do so. Indeed, they are already doing so to a considerable extent. When the Bill is enacted they will be in a position to recruit from the Bar in-house lawyers who will still be able to continue to practise in the High Court and the principal appellate courts. It will be more tempting for members of the Bar to leave and to join those firms. That is a fear with some substance, but the approach of many at the Bar is too pessimistic. Although there are certainly advantages in being an in-house lawyer, there are also disadvantages and frustrations. The Bar will be able to surmount that competition and will continue to attract many of the best and brightest. I also foresee that many people who leave the Bar and join the large City firms as in-house lawyers will in time return to the Bar as independent practitioners.

A further anxiety about the Bill relates to contingency fees. It is crucial to the effective and efficient administration of justice that there is absolute trust between the judge and the advocate appearing before him or her. A barrister has a duty to the court which may conflict with the interests of his client. He has a duty to draw the judge's attention to cases that go against the

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argument being put forward. There is a duty to disclose documents that are unhelpful to the case. There is also a duty not to harass unduly or unfairly the witness who is being cross-examined. My main anxiety about the contingency fees--I am glad that we are adopting the Scottish rather than the American system--is that, because the barrister's financial advantage is caught up to a much greater extent with the outcome of the case, there will be greater pressures brought to bear on our current high professional standards.

I believe that the Bar will be able to withstand those pressures, as will our friends the solicitor advocates who will be joining us before the High Court, the Court of Appeal and other appellate courts, but there are some risks in the Bill. Good reforming measures often carry risks. On the whole, the Bill is a good one and I commend it to the House.

9.20 pm

Mr. John Fraser (Norwood) : We have had a fair, critical and open- minded debate. There has been no difference about the Bill between the two sides of the House. The debate has not been dominated entirely by the legal profession, and there has been no unanimity between Labour and Conservative Members. In all, we have had a good, stimulating debate and the Bill has had a healthy start before it enters Committee.

The debate vindicates the Opposition's decision not to vote against Second Reading tonight. We support many parts of the Bill, but it was right for us to table a reasoned amendment, for which we will ask the House to vote. Our amendment fills out the frame for the Bill and provides performance standards by which we shall measure the way in which the Government provide both for the reform of the legal profession and for the access to law for people throughout the country.

The Bill cannot be described as having a single theme. On the one hand, it deregulates part of the profession, and on the other it introduces at least five quangos. It is a Bill for the English courts and the English legal profession.

Mr. Alex Carlile : And for the Welsh.

Mr. Fraser : And for the Welsh--I beg the hon. and learned hon. Gentleman's pardon. It is a Bill for the English and Welsh legal professions, and it was introduced by a Scots lawyer. This must be the first occasion on which legislation, in its early stages at any rate, has led to threatened industrial action by the judges and the threatened resignation of the Attorney-General.

With one hand, the Bill gives rights and opportunities for solicitors to become judges or have rights of audience in the higher courts, yet it almost takes those rights away with the other hand. In Committee we will want to consider the possibility of a single designated judge exercising a right of veto over the extension of the rights of audience. We want to get that balance right when we examine that matter in Committee.

The Bill reforms the courts system, but it does absolutely nothing about the obscurities surrounding the selection, training and appointments to the judiciary--and by judiciary I mean both the High Court and the magistrates bench. In the light of what the Attorney-General said in his opening remarks about equal

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opportunity and avoiding discrimination, it is even more important that we should open up that area of the legal profession to reform as well.

As I have said, we will not vote against Second Reading tonight, because there is a great deal in the Bill that we can support. However, we would have had a better Bill and the progress of legal reform and the reform of the courts would have been assisted if we had had such a debate a year ago, when the Government produced their Green Paper and then their White Paper. The quality of today's debate sustains the argument that this is the kind of subject on which the House should be consulted at a much earlier stage and on which we could have made a constructive non-party contribution to the development of policy. It is a pity that the House has come to the matter so late in the day.

What should be our attitude to the reform of the legal profession and the provision of services? I declare an interest, in that I am a lawyer. From time to time, we are not popular either as lawyers or as Members of Parliament, even among our colleagues until--as all hon. Members will be aware--someone actually wants advice. One is reasonably popular on those occasions, but one is not always universally popular at other times.

There is great danger in confusing qualifications with monopoly. Competition is not distorted by those who offer services being trained, having high standards and being competent to practise--indeed, rather the reverse. Competition is helped by having a common set of specifications and qualifications. Competition is distorted only when access to a qualification is not open to all, or when a qualification provides restricted entry to doing something for which it is not necessary to have the qualification at all, or when anti-competitive behaviour is imposed as a condition of holding the qualification--for instance, prohibitions on advertising and price display. There would have been less criticism of the professions if the Law Society and the Bar had revised their rules, particularly in respect of advertising and making information known about services provided, much earlier.

The trend of consumer protection has been in favour of tests of competence- -for instance, the control of conduct of estate agents, house builders, insurance brokers, investment business, doctors, dentists, nurses, teachers and so on. It would be short-sighted if we were to reverse that process for lawyers, because their practice becomes more complicated all the time and demands more, not less, training and more qualifications. We meet the needs of the consumer if we make sure that people are properly qualified. We shall certainly want an even playing field and proper regulation when we deal with these matters in Committee.

Although protection of the consumer is important, it is not the only consideration when it comes to regulating legal services. There must also be an ethical commitment to an ideal of truth, trust and fairness, even if the lawyer suffers in the short term by obeying it. If the professional ethic is lost, in the long run the consumer will lose as well.

There are two classic examples, one of which will appeal to my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin). One occurs when a defence lawyer is asked to plead innocence of a crime to which the defendant has unambiguously confessed to the lawyer. Lawyers are constantly asked, "How can you defend somebody who has told you that he has done the crime?" Of course he cannot. The second example is not the defence lawyer but

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the prosecuting lawyer who suppresses evidence which, if made available to the defence, would lead to the acquittal of the defendant. Those are two examples in which the duty of the lawyer, whether to the client or to the state, must override the instructions that are given to him by the client. If he otherwise overcomes his professional scruples, he is in effect taking money to tell lies knowingly or to suppress the truth from the court or from his colleagues.

I mention those points not because I think that lawyers are particularly self-righteous or better than other professions. I do not think that they are. Many professions have an ethic. It is not right to say that, as a member of the legal profession, one treats these matters on a higher plane than people in other professions. I mention those points to underline the fact that one simply cannot have purely competitive, market, money-making considerations as the only basis for this legislation.

We do not want a Bill that will create injustice. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley) mentioned that clause 85 will create a real injustice. At the moment, everybody knows that, if they have a claim for personal injury, with some exceptions the writ must be issued within three years. That is a certain period and it allows for a solicitor to have three months afterwards within which to serve the proceedings. Many people will suffer major injustice if clause 85 remains as drafted. When matters go to court, there will be arguments about whether service of the proceedings took place.

There are many examples. A company may change its registered offices and writs may be sent to the wrong place. There is a great possibility of creating uncertainty and injustice if clause 85 remains in the Bill. We shall return to that point in Committee. The Bill gives new rights to conduct legal services, such as probate and conveyancing and, to a small extent, litigation. In Committee, we shall try to ensure that the Bill works even-handedly between practitioners, and follows the principle that independence of advice to the client should be preserved. There are too many temptations and imperfections for this matter to be left to market forces. My two examples have already been touched on. The first relates to probate. We do not oppose, the Law Society does not oppose and no one in the profession opposes in principle the extension of the ability of non- lawyers to take probate cases. If a bank or an insurance company has been appointed as an executor, it is right that it should be allowed to get probate itself, provided it is properly qualified to do so. However, at the moment, solicitors are under an external supervision in terms of the amount of money that they can charge for probate cases and it is well known that banks and insurance companies charge about three times as much for carrying out probate services.

In another place, the Government said that that matter should be left to the market, but we must remember whom we are talking about and the people who pay that three-times-higher bill, should that occur. First, those concerned will not be the executors of the will. They will not be in charge of the administration of the assets of the estate. Secondly, the original customer is dead--otherwise the will would not go to probate. Thirdly, those involved may well be widows or children who do not have any legal capacity. One cannot say that that class of consumer--on

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the one hand, the dead consumer and, on the other hand, the vulnerable consumer, who is perhaps a minor--will be properly protected by the operation of market forces. Although I do not oppose the provision in principle, there must be an appeal to a third-party authority about the level of charging because the scale of charges might have been fixed long after the testator made the will or even after the will has been probated.

My second example relates to conveyancing. Again, there is no opposition in principle, because Labour Members have been instrumental in widening the choice of conveyancing services, while maintaining standards of competence and behaviour. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) was not called to speak in the debate. If financial institutions carry out the conveyancing, the question that arises is whether they will perform that work primarily for the consumer's benefit or for their own. The problem is whether they will undertake what is known in other trades as "cherry picking"--that is, taking those parts of the work that are attractive and remunerative and leaving those that are unremunerative.

I shall summarise my point by considering the amounts of money involved in a conveyancing transaction. Let us assume that a house is sold for £100,000 and, for the sake of argument, that the conveyancing charges will be £500. In the same transaction, the commission for the sale of the house will be £2,000--about four times higher than the conveyancing fees. I repeat that we are talking about a financial institution that may earn £2,000 in commission for the sale of the property as opposed to about £500 in legal and conveyancing fees.

However, we must then add another factor. Let us assume that the property is sold on a mortgage of £60,000 backed by an endowment policy. The commission on that endowment policy might be worth about £1,000. Therefore, on the one hand, there is the consideration of making £3,000 in commission on the sale and the endowment and £500 for the so-called "independent" advice that is being given to the person undertaking the conveyance. Under those circumstances, one must consider whether, unless there are countervailing rules, completely independent advice will be given to the person undertaking the conveyance.

There is a simple way out of that, especially in relation to the endowment. As the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi) has pointed out, it is reckoned that about £680 million per year is lost by people surrendering endowment policies that they would otherwise have been well advised to maintain. The answer probably lies in the Lord Chancellor exercising his powers to compel the financial institutions to disclose the commission that they receive as a result of the sale of an endowment policy. Solicitors have to do that now. They must not only disclose the amount but account for it to the customer. There must be an even playing field if we are to ensure that the first consideration, which is independent advice, is achieved and that there is fair competition between the professions.

The deficiencies in the Government's approach to these matters form the subject of our reasoned amendment. The first deficiency is the failure to deal with the inadequacy of legal aid. My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz) gave some telling figures. The truth of the matter is that, although expenditure on legal aid has increased during the past 10 years, in the past two or three

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years, the number of people who obtained legal aid advice and assistance has fallen off. More worryingly, there is now a falling off in the number of firms undertaking legal aid work. That has never happened before. The reason why it is happening is that the Government have geared the reward to people undertaking legal aid--both solicitors and barristers--at a figure well below the real costs and the inflation rate for conducting legal work.

The reward this year is about 7 per cent., compared with a real rate of inflation in legal costs and the costs of running a legal practice or barrister's practice of about 12 per cent. That has had a cumulative effect over the past few years. The consequence is that people are increasingly getting out of legal aid work. If we carry on giving third-class rates of reward to people who do legal aid work, we shall at least finish up with a second-class practice. That is not right. Access to the law and quality of representation should be commensurate with the case. The way in which legal aid has been drifting is militating against that.

The second deficiency in the Bill relates to the conduct of county courts. There was some attraction in the suggestion of the hon. Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. Malins) that there should be competition between one county court and another. Indeed, there is some such competition. In some county courts, people submit voluntarily to their jurisdiction because they know that in court X an application under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 will be dealt with in seven days, whereas in court Y it will be dealt with in about six weeks or two months. There should perhaps be some competition between one county court and another.

The Government should think about a second practical matter--the difficulty of a litigant coming up against the same judge time and time again. In the High Court, at least there is the advantage that, unless one is unlucky, one will not get the same judge twice. Especially in country jurisdictions, there is often the possibility that, if either the advocate or litigant upsets the judge on one occasion, they will upset him on every subsequent occasion. That is a perfectly serious point. If we are to push more work down to the county courts, the judges should move around as well as the litigants.

Our greatest fear is that, on present performance, the Government are delegating work to a pretty ramshackle structure. I have just looked through a brief list of claims of maladministration against county court staff. It makes horrific reading. At Braintree county court, the list was overloaded and a case was adjourned. The same thing happened at Bromley county court and at Edmonton county court. At Exeter county court, the judge did not turn up. The registrar did not turn up at another county court. Cases have been incorrectly listed for a registrar--and so on.

Anyone who has any passing aquaintance with the operation of the county courts will be deeply worried about the standard of performance and the possibility of loading a huge amount of work on to a structure that cannot cope with the business now. The Attorney-General said that some staff would be released because the county courts will no longer operate payments systems. I am not sure that that change will operate to the advantage of some smaller litigants, who will say that they paid their money directly to the plaintiff. The bailiff will come in and find no independent record of whether money has been paid or not.

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Our last criticism is that nothing in the Bill modernises except in the slightest detail, or makes transparent our system of recruiting, training and selecting the judiciary, or puts into statute any criteria for that exercise. That is in stark contrast to a Bill that sets out the criteria for the duties of the advisory committee. The way in which judges and magistrates are selected or permitted to apply for the bench should be open and transparent and placed outside the control of political appointments. They should be the subject of the Judicial Appointments Group and take into consideration the elimination of prejudice or operation of discrimination through sex or race. As far as possible, the judges should reflect the composition of the community upon which they sit in judgment. These should not be secret matters, subject to political control. We were accused of trying to ensure political control of the appointment of judges, but we want to see that removed entirely from the political arena. I can think of one case in which the Prime Minister operated a political veto in respect of a judge's appointment.

As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warley, West (Mr. Archer) said, this is an enabling Bill, the final shape of which is not known. In our reasoned amendment, we try to sketch in a framework in which the change will take place and provide, in the course of our Committee discussions, for a comprehensive legal service in which the quality of and access to representation before the courts and tribunals are not dependent on wealth, privilege or advantage, but provide equal access to the law throughout the country. The Bill will not do that, which is why we have tabled our amendment. If our amendment is not passed, we shall try to achieve those goals in Committee.

9.42 pm

The Solicitor-General (Sir Nicholas Lyell) : This has been an interesting and valuable debate with varied contributions from both sides of the House. If we had shut our eyes it would often have been difficult to know from which party or interest any particular contribution had come.

The Bill tackles and sets out to resolve major issues which have required attention for many years. The hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. Fraser) made a number of detailed comments which I look forward to taking up, considering and discussing further in Committee. The hon. Gentleman has a great deal of knowledge, having practised as a solicitor in London, and it has been a pleasure to work with him on previous Committees.

The comments made in the debate covered the key topics in the Bill. First, there is the civil justice review, which the Bill implements and which provides the first major structural reform of our system of civil justice since the judicature Acts of 1873. That aspect has been generally welcomed. The only point made about it was that it required adequate resourcing. That point has been firmly made by the Lord Chancellor and, in so far as it forms part of the criticisms underlying the Opposition's reasoned amendment, I shall return to it in detail later.

The second key aspect is the creation of a framework--I emphasise that word --to enable the structure of the legal profession to develop through a process of evolutionary change. That has been welcomed, but it was also questioned by the right hon. Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies), who asked how it would work in the Bill. It is

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important to emphasise that the Bill creates not the result, but the framework for producing the result. It will initially be a matter for the profession, or parts of the profession, or for other professions, to come forward with proposals which will be examined by the advisory committee under clauses 15 and 16, by the Lord Chancellor and by the judiciary, through the four senior designated judges. Their combined wisdom will come forward and their combined agreement will be necessary before changes can be made.

It must be recognised that the Bill follows years of difficulty, particularly between the two parts of the legal profession--barristers and solicitors--which has been to some extent reflected in the carefully considered arguments put forward from either side of the debate. It was evident that the arguments were advanced not from either side of the Chamber but from the two points of view. I think of the eloquent arguments on behalf of solicitors advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi) and the eloquent arguments on behalf of barristers put forward by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence), the hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham) and the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile). All those arguments were reflected in the responses of barristers and judges to the Green Papers--the "quality of justice"--and they will have to be combed through and evaluated by the professionals themselves in the first instance to see what kind of structure they come up with. It will then come to the Lord Chancellor and the judiciary for approval, or the lack of it, as the case may be. In that way, what has often been an agonising debate, which has properly been passionately discussed by those on both sides, should find a way of making progress, and a system which had not shown much capability of gentle evolution should find a way of effecting evolutionary change.

The third key point in the debate concerned the creation of a framework within which to encourage wider competition in conveyancing and probate services. The other sensible reforms relating to the appointment of the judiciary, allowing solicitors to make progress up the judiciary, judicial pensions, the power of the Law Society to regulate solicitors, and the extension of the jurisdiction of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration to cover court staff were also mentioned. The extension of the commissioner's powers was widely welcomed, not least by the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth), one of the laymen who played a significant part in the debate--with his hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley) and my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Mr. Bruce).

In its major aspects, the Bill tackles problems that have been the subject of serious debate for as long as I have been in Parliament--almost 11 years --and for which there has been a growing need for resolution for all the 25 years I have been in practice as a barrister.

Like my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, I was taken aback to learn that the Opposition appeared to be seeking to oppose the Bill as a matter of principle, but it has become clear from the speeches of the right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris) and of the hon. Member for Norwood that the Opposition do not oppose the Bill itself

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but are putting down a marker with regard to two aspects of it--resources for the county court, and legal aid--by means of their reasoned amendment.

First, I wish to rebut as strongly as I can the comment by the right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon that legal aid is withering on the vine. That is nonsense. When the right hon. and learned Gentleman's party left office, legal aid was being funded to the tune of £119 million per year. It is funded now at about £589 million--almost a fivefold increase in value and about 150 per cent. over and above inflation. That can hardly be described as withering on the vine. Nor do I refer to monetary value alone. The aspects of legal aid which are important to this Bill include the fact that the number of civil legal aid certificates has increased from 190,000 10 years ago to 259,000 today--an increase of about 30 per cent. That is a picture of steady growth.

The right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon and the hon. Member for Norwood criticised the Lord Chancellor because he has set in train a review of legal aid, coupled with the careful administrative review that the Legal Aid Board is carrying out, and because he is seeking how best to target the money on legal aid. That is not a matter for criticism. It is a matter of good government. I do not know what impression the Opposition wish to give the country about legal aid. I have peeped into their policy review to see what they say. [Interruption.] I see the hon. Member for St. Helens, South scowling. He would no doubt wish nobody to look into that document and probably shrinks from looking at it himself. It states : "Over time and as resources become available we intend consistently to improve access to legal aid."

That is the kind of general statement which will thrill everyone in Knowsley.

The realistic step to take is exactly that which the Lord Chancellor is taking--to look carefully at where best to deploy the money. As he has said, he will not wait three years to come forward with sensible proposals- -he will introduce them as and when his scrutiny throws them up. I remind the House that as recently as 9 April the reforms that the Lord Chancellor announced in November came into effect. Under those reforms, children's means are to be assessed separately from those of their parents, pensioners dependent on a small capital nest egg will get additional protection and all litigants in personal injury cases will have the benefit of an increase in the upper limit. That will help many people to gain better access to legal aid.

Mr. George Howarth : Will the Solicitor-General give way?

The Solicitor-General : I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, but I have several points to answer and not much time in which to do so.

The Opposition have argued the need for adequate resources for the county courts. The Lord Chancellor has recognised that there have been problems in the county courts. The hon. Member for Norwood scratched around his notes to pull together some rather disparate problems from individual county courts. I do not deny that those problems exist or that there may be more, but the Government are tackling them. Expenditure is being increased. The Lord Chancellor has made it clear that the civil justice reforms will come in stages and not before the courts are ready.

The number of circuit judges has increased steadily from 353 five years ago to 408 now. That is a significant

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increase. As a result of the last autumn statement, the number of staff in post is to increase by 350 this year to carry out the administrative work of the courts. This year there are to be up to an additional 100 staff for the civil justice review and the Children Bill, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz). The need to handle suitor's cash will be ended. It may lead to one or two difficulties, but it is a sensible way to relieve county court staff of a job which plantiffs and defendants can do better themselves. That will release some 350 staff for other work. The summons production centre at Northampton is imaginative thinking. Large users of the county court can issue summonses, which some do in large quantities, highly efficiently. That will result in a saving of 50 staff.

Under present administrative procedures some 1,500 trials a year come down from the High Court to the county court and are handled by 50 trial centres. In my early days in the county court, if a case went over more than one day, one would stand back and go away for three to five weeks. Cases dribbled on for months. That will not happen. An additional 25 trial centres are in the pipeline. That is the proper and, dare I say it, the Conservative way to manage the system, to get it working better so as to meet the needs of the day. I want to try to answer one or two points raised in the debate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling) spoke as a layman, and laymen are to play an important part in the advisory committee where they are to have a majority. It is in the interests of the public and users of legal services that the reforms are rightly being brought forward. My right hon. Friend made three points about probate, mortgages and tied practitioners. The answer to his point on probate is that at the moment there are no provisions for the administration of estates after grant of probate because there are none in the present law. The Government have improved the position by introducing a complaint system to cover such matters, which my right hon. Friend will find in clauses 46 and 47. Clause 39 enables the Lord Chancellor, if appropriate, to make regulations on accounting for commissions. The financial services regime deals with tied practitioners, but we shall have an opportunity in Committee to consider how that works in practice in relation to the providers of mortgages.

My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. Malins) asked why we do not let any case go to the High Court. Here again it is a question of proper management of resources. There will no longer be any upper limit in the county court. If one let any case go to the High Court, the great temptation for the client would be to say that his was a terribly important case and that if it could go to the High Court it should. That would be a wasteful use of resources. My hon. Friend also asked about employed lawyers and why they should not have to abide by the cab rank rule. It is impractical to think that an employed lawyer carrying out work for his employer in a particular area can in any realistic sense hold himself open to all comers. He would become an employed solicitor. We must hold that position open.

The hon. Member for Barnsley, Central was worried about wasting money on issuing writs. I understand the point because I was involved in that debate long before I was a member of the Government. There has always been a problem about whether to clamp down on the length of

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time available in which to start proceedings and get them up and running or whether to get them moving. There has been a consistent complaint that cases have hung around for three years, the writ is then issued and the next year has dribbled by. To answer a point made by the hon. Member for Norwood, that period will come down to four months. Writs will have to be issued and served and proceedings got under way. After several years of complaints, we believe that that will be a wise approach, but we can discuss that further in Committee.

The Bill lays the ground for major reforms to our system of civil justice. It opens the way to a balanced, carefully thought out evolutionary development of our legal profession. It provides a structure for properly controlled development of competition in conveyancing. After years of debate and not a little anguish, the Bill will come to be seen as a landmark in the sensible, evolutionary Conservative approach to reform and I commend it to the House. Question put, That the amendment be made :--

The House divided : Ayes 101, Noes 203.

Division No. 162] [10 pm

AYES

Allen, Graham

Anderson, Donald

Archer, Rt Hon Peter

Armstrong, Hilary

Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

Beckett, Margaret

Bennett, A. F. (D'nt'n & R'dish)

Bermingham, Gerald

Bidwell, Sydney

Boateng, Paul

Boyes, Roland

Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

Buchan, Norman

Buckley, George J.

Callaghan, Jim

Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

Campbell-Savours, D. N.

Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

Clelland, David

Clwyd, Mrs Ann

Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

Cook, Robin (Livingston)

Cryer, Bob

Cummings, John

Cunliffe, Lawrence

Cunningham, Dr John

Dalyell, Tam

Darling, Alistair

Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

Dixon, Don

Dobson, Frank

Doran, Frank

Duffy, A. E. P.

Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth

Eadie, Alexander

Ewing, Harry (Falkirk E)

Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)

Fisher, Mark

Flynn, Paul

Foot, Rt Hon Michael

Foster, Derek

Fraser, John

George, Bruce

Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

Hardy, Peter

Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

Heal, Mrs Sylvia

Henderson, Doug

Hood, Jimmy

Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

Illsley, Eric

Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

Leighton, Ron

Lewis, Terry

Livingstone, Ken

Lofthouse, Geoffrey

McAllion, John

McAvoy, Thomas

McCartney, Ian

McFall, John

McLeish, Henry

Madden, Max

Mahon, Mrs Alice

Marshall, David (Shettleston)

Meale, Alan

Michael, Alun

Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

Morgan, Rhodri

Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

Mullin, Chris

Nellist, Dave

Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

Patchett, Terry

Pike, Peter L.

Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

Prescott, John

Radice, Giles

Redmond, Martin

Reid, Dr John

Robertson, George

Rogers, Allan

Rooker, Jeff

Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

Ruddock, Joan

Skinner, Dennis

Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

Spearing, Nigel

Strang, Gavin

Vaz, Keith

Watson, Mike (Glasgow, C)

Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)

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