Baked Beans Law


The Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, has pointed out in relation to the owning of law firms by supermarkets, that if this is done, legal services will be provided more competitively. We can all have those services provided as cheaply and availably as a can of baked beans, which, of course, the Citizens Advice Bureaux are regularly telling all the people who line their waiting rooms and who cannot get even basic advice (from solicitors, banks, supermarkets or otherwise).



The Chairman of the Bar Council may call the Legal Services Bill 'a positive imaginative blueprint for the future', and the £19 billion annual legal market could be hard to resist, whether for a supermarket or whomever.



But just how much of that £19 billion will be reinvested in the public interest? And who is going to decide which of those firms are acting against the public interest such that they can be closed down by government under the Legal Service Board's powers?



Peter Balchin, Alistairs, Bristol