I note with interest that the Solicitors Regulation Authority is to canvass personal injury firms to ask how they will cope when the government bans referral fees. I would suggest that they cope by ceasing to chase the gravy train and actually exercise business and professional judgement.

I do not recall any regulator or professional body consulting me or my partners when we were forced (along with hundreds of other firms) to bail out the banks and insurance companies over the fiasco involving The Accident Group (TAG) a few years ago. Readers will recall that that debacle centred around what were later found to be illegal referral fees, namely payments made to an associate company of TAG for services relating to personal injury claims.

The whole TAG scheme depended on the support of several large banks and insurance companies which were, one might have thought, capable of exercising a bit of business sense but who instead blamed solicitors for their losses and sued accordingly. Luckily for my firm, I exercised some sense (when I realised that all was not as it seemed) by plugging the flow of TAG work into our office.

Referral fees are inherently wrong; this is borne out not only by the above episode but by the general experience of mankind over the centuries. Such fees compromise the integrity and independence of the recipient and have no place in our legal system (a principle which not so long ago was taken as axiomatic by every good lawyer). Continually saying a thing is harmless does not make it so; if you do not agree, try it with the next shark you meet.

Stephen Thorn, Drivers, York