I was delighted to read Legal Services Consumer Panel chair Dr Dianne Hayter’s commitment to the reduction of regulation and her call for the expansion of consumer choice.

I wonder if Dr Hayter will share her views with the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and voice her concerns with solicitor-advocates and barristers alike, in opposing the Joint Advocacy Group’s proposed further ‘system of assessment’ for all criminal higher rights advocates?

Dr Hayter may be aware that, if JAG gets its way, barristers and solicitor-advocates will be required to become ‘reaccredited’ every five years in order to maintain their criminal higher rights of audience. And the reason for yet another independent regulator? The need for ‘consumer confidence’.

Dr Hayter rightly observes that any case for the regulation of will-writers must rest on reliable evidence that consumers are losing out. Will she join qualified criminal higher rights advocates in calling on the SRA, Bar Standards Board and JAG to produce reliable evidence that higher rights advocates’ consumers are indeed ‘losing out’, before even further layers of regulation and cost are heaped upon us?

Kristin Heimark, solicitor-advocate