FREE MARKET?

It is with wry amusement I note that almost on the very day the Office of Fair Trading issued its competition report into the professions...It is with wry amusement I note that almost on the very day the Office of Fair Trading issued its competition report into the professions in the UK, the EU committee on legal affairs and the internal market issued a call for a resolution that member states should be allowed to lay down compulsory fee scales for lawyers.

The committee apparently fears that lawyers may otherwiseoperate and charge fees on a competitive basis subject to the full rigours of the EU competition rules.

If a block exemption were issued by Brussels for such arrangements, the cat would certainly be put among the pigeons.Such exemptions exempt any arrangement from the chapter I prohibition of the Competition Act.

More importantly, however, this shows that some of our European brethren have a long way to go before reaching the largely free, fair and certainly laudably competitive,market for legal services in our jurisdiction.Susan Singleton, Singletons, Pinner, Middlesex