Mr.
Redwood: I rise to support the two Front
Benchers—my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk and
the hon. Member for Richmond Park—in welcoming the principle
behind the order. I am an enthusiast for choice and competition as they
usually produce better quality and lower
prices. I
also rise to speak because, as often happens, I am worried by the
quality of the background preparation that has gone into the measure,
the delay in bringing it forward and the inadequacy of the supporting
documents. That makes me wonder whether the Minister has concentrated
on the measure properly and whether she has reached a sensible judgment
based on proper assessment of the costs and
benefits. In
my hand I have a copy of the recent document entitled, “Full
Regulatory Impact Assessment for Implementing Sections 54 and 55 of the
Courts and Legal Services Act 1990”. The document is remarkably
flimsy and one sided, and I note that the Minister
who
should have signed it before bringing it to Committee has not done so.
Perhaps a later edition has been signed but not communicated to
us. The
document goes under the typed name of a former Parliamentary
Under-Secretary of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs, but
that Minister—who is now Minister of State, Department for
Business, Innovation and Skills—has not appended his signature
to it. From the look on the face of the Minister present in Committee,
I take it that the document has now been read and agreed with, and is
regarded as
adequate.
Mr.
Bellingham: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, given
the long delay since the consultation period, it would have been better
to have had another RIA? This one is dated 2004 and is out of date. It
was done in a very different economy and refers to the Department for
Constitutional Affairs and Ministers who have long since moved on to
other
Departments.
Mr.
Redwood: It is a bit of an insult to Parliament that the
RIA has not been updated and properly considered. That makes me wonder
whether the Minister did the due diligence and the necessary background
work before bringing the proposal before us. I wish to probe that
matter a little more, because it is important to tease out how such a
decision was made. It will have quite a big impact on many people at a
sensitive time in their lives—when they are seeking probate
services—and on important professionals such as lawyers and
accountants who would expect the House to take such matters seriously
and try to get them
right. One
purpose of a regulatory impact assessment is to examine the costs that
new legislation imposes on the people most affected by it, which must
include the Government and the public sector as well as the private
sector. I cannot see any reference to possible extra costs to the
public sector, public probate services and public regulators. Surely
there must be
some. It
would be good if the Minister shared her thinking on any extra public
sector costs. Has she signed off on them with the Treasury? What
estimates has she made of them? Why did they not appear in this
document? At a time when we are all very conscious of the need to
control public spending, we need to be hawkish about even quite small
sums of money, instituting the proper checks and balances and ensuring
proper
discipline. More
importantly, there is the question of the burden for those who operate
in this area of service provision. I am especially worried about the
lack of any proper assessment of the costs to new providers. As I said,
I welcome competition and choice, and the measure should be better news
for consumers. However, rather laconically, this RIA just says that it
should not put the prices up. I think it may do better than that. The
Minister might like to say that it will do better, because that would
provide some explanation of why we are going through this process in
the first
place. There
must surely be extra costs to new providers, but there are no numbers
of any kind on most things in the document, especially on new
providers. What are the estimated costs of extra training? Clearly,
extra training must be necessary to meet the standards and requirements
that the Minister referred to. What are the extra regulatory costs? If
we are to have another professional body to
provide regulation of a new range of providers—it will be
accepted—there must be regulatory costs. Can those be shared
with us? I dare say that the benefits will exceed them, but this is
incredibly sloppy and symptomatic of how so many Ministers do their job
in government. They cannot be bothered to do the research and put the
numbers
in. Hilary
Armstrong (North-West Durham) (Lab):
Nonsense!
Mr.
Redwood: I am happy that one Member has woken up and
wishes to join the debate. I am happy to give way if she wants to
intervene; if she has other things on her mind, perhaps she will leave
the Committee and leave the proceedings to those of us who are
concerned about these changes and the procedures that should be
followed. I
would like to hear a little more from the Minister on what monitoring
and regulation there will be. A new professional body and new
professional providers are being established. What additional
regulation does there have to be? As my hon. Friend the Member for
North-West Norfolk said, there should be a little more information to
update the costs and the changes in this range of service provision
because of the different economic circumstances. We deserve more than
an unsigned RIA prepared in 2004 with such obvious gaps in
it. 4.54
pm
Bridget
Prentice: Quite a number of questions have been asked and
I will do my best to answer them all. Otherwise, I will write to hon.
Members. The
hon. Member for North-West Norfolk asked why this process has taken so
long. As he pointed out, the first applications were not received until
2006, even though section 55 was commenced in December 2004. ACCA
submitted its application only in January of last year. A statutory
procedure set out in schedule 9 to the 1990 Act has to be followed. We
have to seek the advice of the legal services consultative panel and
the president of the family division. In response to what other members
of the Committee have said, it is important that we ensure that they
have adequate time to look at the issues so that our constituents can
feel that they will receive proper advice from whoever they go to for
such services. That is why it has taken so
long. I
cannot explain to the Committee why ACCA took until 2008 to decide that
it wished to be a provider. Presumably, that is something that that
august body debated and considered for
itself. The
hon. Gentleman also asked about PII. ACCA prescribed a minimum of
£50,000. When it went to the legal services consultative panel,
the panel suggested that the sum should be raised to £100,000 to
which ACCA agreed. That is a good example of his correct concern about
PII and the fact that the legal services consultative panel is on the
case. It persuaded ACCA to set the cover at twice the amount suggested
originally. The
hon. Gentleman went on to ask how complaints handling will be dealt
with. As he knows, I am a great believer in proper complaints
procedures being set up within an organisation before complaints have
to go outwith it for further scrutiny. ACCA has provisions in place.
For example, each firm has to have an internal
complaints procedure and ACCA recommends that members notify their
clients of the firms’ internal complaints procedure, its
handling in their letters of engagement and, furthermore, the fact that
when a complaint is not appropriate for full investigation, it could be
suitable for conciliation. ACCA has a conciliation unit in place for
that
purpose. If
there are legal disputes between members and their clients, they can be
pursued through the courts. However, sometimes complaints are analysed
between the legal aspect and the aspect of conciliation, which the
conciliation unit oversees. As I said, if clients are not satisfied
with how the complaint has been handled in-house or by ACCA, they can
complain to the LSO, whose jurisdiction covers anyone authorised under
section 55 of the 1990 Act. Under the 2007 Act, there is the
opportunity to complain to the Office for Legal Complaints about any
members who provide probate
services.
Susan
Kramer: The Minister will be aware of the recognition
under consumer legislation that vulnerable customers might need a
special hand-holding service to go through a complaints procedure. Is
that provided under this system, given that many of the people involved
might be old and quite frail or emotionally distraught and, thus,
highly
vulnerable?
Bridget
Prentice: I can say with some confidence that that is the
case. Certainly, when the Office for Legal Complaints is in place, part
of its remit will be to ensure that all consumers, regardless of their
ability to articulate their complaint, are given that hand-holding
service. I hope that we were very conscious of that when we introduced
the 2007
Act. The
hon. Member for North-West Norfolk asked about training. Only those
members with practising certificate rights will be authorised to
provide probate services, and they have to complete suitable training
before they can do so. They will be obliged to complete courses offered
by ACCA or another training provider, such as Central Law Training Ltd.
That obligation arises from the fundamental requirement that members
obtain and maintain competence, which includes obtaining relevant
continuing professional development. He went on to ask about the impact
on solicitors. I do not believe that there will be a huge impact on
solicitors. Two
bodies have already been granted approved status. There is certainly
not expected to be a big impact on the probate market in the immediate
future. ACCA has indicated that it is unlikely that it will start
authorising members until at least next January, which will give it
time to put the necessary training in place and to make the changes in
insurance arrangements. Of course, we would not expect all 6,400 ACCA
members who have practising certificates to decide to seek
authorisation—at least not
initially. The
hon. Gentleman asked about consultation. Although no specific
consultation is required, the legal services consultative panel used a
matrix provided by the Law Society, which shows the current
requirements for solicitor probate practitioners in terms of training,
complaints handling and cover. The panel was also keen to learn from
practitioners about the practicalities of preparing probate papers and
what complications could occur. It received a presentation from Richard
Grosberg, a probate
practitioner and former chair of the Law Society’s probate
section. Before it gave its seal of approval, therefore, the panel
ensured that it was confident that ACCA could provide the necessary
training. The
hon. Member for Richmond Park asked about the appropriateness of ACCA
as a provider. One reason that ACCA has asked to be a provider is that
it believes—I see no reason to dissent from its view—that
its practising members would be appropriate because of their
qualifications as accountants, knowledge of their clients’
financial affairs and general knowledge and experience of taxation and
the general completion of all kinds of financial statement, including
trust accounts. At this stage, ACCA also believes that its primary
customers will be its existing clients, with whom it already has
long-standing relationships.
The right
hon. Member for Wokingham rightly said that the original explanatory
memorandum is now old, as it was produced in 2004. Indeed, that is why
the Merits Committee asked us to look in detail at some of the issues
raised in it. In the letter that I have sent out, I believe that I have
responded to the issues that the Merits Committee raised and I hope
that I have given the right hon. Gentleman some
assurance. The
right hon. Gentleman also wanted to know what systems are required from
a new provider. I do not have the exact costs for a new provider, but I
will certainly try to get that information to members of the Committee
as soon as possible. Like him, I expect that, if anything, the
provision should ensure that prices do not go up but come down. There
will be more competition, albeit not a huge amount
initially. Nevertheless,
the provision is part of the ongoing step-by-step approach that we have
taken to put the
2007 Act in place. As a result of that approach, I expect consumers to
have wider choice, more competitive prices and a higher standard of
service, because there will be further training required of any
provider in any of the different areas covered by the 2007 Act. With
the Office for Legal Complaints and the Legal Services Board as the
regulatory bodies, operating under one roof, that will cover all the
different organisations, not just the Law Society or the Bar Council.
We will have a much better system for
consumers. Mr.
Redwood: The idea of a regulatory impact assessment is to
provide detailed analysis of costs and benefits so that the Minister
and then the House can make a sensible decision. It is clear from this
Minister’s update that she is referring us back to the 2004
explanatory memorandum, which says:
“A
full RIA was
completed”. It
is annexed to this document, which is why I quoted from the annex. Will
she answer the point? Will she produce a proper, up-to-date RIA? Has
she signed one off? It appears
not.
Bridget
Prentice: I am more than happy to go back and look at the
RIA to see whether it needs further updating. I will ensure that the
Committee gets first sight of it. On that basis, I hope that the right
hon. Gentleman will agree to the
order. Question
put and agreed
to. Resolved, That
the Committee has considered the draft Probate Services (Approved
Bodies) Order
2009. 5.5
pm Committee
rose.
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