Parliament: Law Society and Bar Council join forces to voice their concerns to peers


The Law Society and Bar Council joined forces this week to lobby peers ahead of the first opportunity to amend the Legal Services Bill.



In a letter sent to peers as the Bill reached the committee stage in the Lords, Law Society President Fiona Woolf and Bar Council chairman Geoffrey Vos QC reiterated their opposition to a minister alone appointing the chairman and members of the proposed oversight regulator, the legal services board (LSB).



Recognising the need for a balance between 'ensuring the LSB is free from political influence on the one hand and the responsibility of ministers to Parliament for the legal services sector and the performance of the LSB on the other', they called for the appointment to be made with the concurrence of the Lord Chief Justice. The Society would like to see them advised by a high-level independent appointments panel.



The letter also said the Bill needs to ensure that the LSB uses its powers where appropriate and proportionate, 'in order to avoid undue micro-management of approved regulators and adding to the costs and other burdens that would be entailed'. The Law Society and Bar Council have proposed amendments to raise the threshold for when the LSB could intervene in their day-to-day work.



The Society is now 'content' to back the Bar Council's strident call for the Bill to contain a power allowing the proposed office of legal complaints to delegate the handling of service complaints back to the approved regulators - even though it would not seek such a move for itself. The Society originally opposed this, but the fact that complaints against barristers often mix service and conduct matters, and that the bar's complaints-handling has generally performed well, have prompted it to soften its stance.



There remains great concern that the government does not intend to contribute to the cost of the new system. 'In other sectors the government contributes towards the cost of the supervisory tier of regulation, as it does in legal services at present,' the letter said. 'In order to provide a further level of accountability for the LSB and to strengthen the public perception of the independence of the new regulatory system, we propose that there should continue to be some funding by the taxpayer.'



Neil Rose