For a man in his late 60s, the Conservative peer and Beachcroft veteran Lord Hunt of Wirral is a veritable Stakhanovite. Not for him the retirement being enjoyed by many who once sat round Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet table.

Hunt’s much-heralded report on regulation is a characteristically exhaustive piece of work. And though it does not come with CPD points, every solicitor who cares about the future of the profession in these uncertain times ought to read it.

It is perhaps this allusion to ‘the profession’ (singular) that we should dwell on. It’s no secret that the big City practices have endured a difficult relationship with the SRA. As Hunt stresses, Nick Smedley’s subsidiary report sparked fears that the profession could be divided, by recommending the creation of a substantially autonomous regulator for corporate firms with its own high-profile – and highly paid – figurehead.

In an adroit piece of what a politician like him might recognise as triangulation, Hunt has endorsed the thrust of Smedley, while recommending that self-governance could potentially be rolled out profession-wide.

The SRA and the City, meanwhile, are now on much firmer ground, as evidenced by the joint working initiative we report in this weeks News.

‘I would not like to see this profession divided because I strongly believe in the old maxim about the benefits of standing united,’ says Hunt. Quite right, and never more so than now.