An official body set up to advise the chancellor of the exchequer on future challenges facing the professional services sector is looking for input from lawyers. Michael Snyder, chairman of the professional services global competitiveness group, said last week that he would ‘welcome ideas from any of the legal professions’ on ways to keep the sector globally competitive.

The group, set up to look at medium and longer-term challenges for professional services, will report directly for the chancellor, as well as to the existing group on City competitiveness, Snyder said.

Priorities are likely to include skills, regulation issues, tax and challenges from overseas. The 20-strong group includes two lawyers: David Cheyne, senior partner at Linklaters, and Stuart Popham, senior partner at Clifford Chance. Snyder, a senior partner at accountants Kingston Smith, is co-chair with Kitty Ussher MP, economic secretary to the Treasury.

Ussher said the government intends to ‘build a debate on public policy that will benefit both the financial services sector and the UK’.

Snyder said the group would report by the end of December and that he intends to make its findings public. ‘My intention is not to produce a series of moans but a series of measures to help the government understand what is needed to maintain the competitiveness of UK professional services,’ he said.