We all ought to be ashamed that the Law Society did not add our voices to those of the bars of France, Spain, Belgium and Italy, which have made their own representations, along with those of the Council of the Bars and Law Societies of the European Union, challenging the obligation to report suspicions of money laundering in breach of their own duty of confidentiality.


There has not been so much as a peep of official complaint from the Law Society of England and Wales about the EU directive or the Proceeds of Crime Act.



No one in Chancery Lane seems to be aware of the serious effect these requirements to 'shop' our clients will have in the long term on public confidence in their lawyers. When the President of the Law Society spoke in North America recently he seemed to be concerned about the administrative burden on firms, rather than the constitutional issue and the damage that is being done to the rule of law.



The House of Lords in Regina v Derby Magistrates Court Ex Parte B [1996] 1 A.C. 487 made the point forcibly when it said 'legal professional privilege... is a fundamental condition on which the administration of justice as a whole rests. It is not for the sake of the applicant alone that the privilege must be upheld. It is in the wider interests of all those who might otherwise be deterred from telling the whole truth to their solicitors'. It seems doubtful that anyone at the Law Society is aware of that judgment and, faced with this unprecedented attack on ancient and fundamental freedom, we seem to be, at best, onlookers.



All over the world lawyers are the ones (sometimes the only ones) who traditionally try to protect the citizen from the power of the state. Some of them risk and lose their lives in the process. It must heartening to politicians here, particularly our freedom-limiting home secretary, that the solicitors' profession has been willing to roll over without any protest at all.



Peter Ryder, locum solicitor, Middlewich, Cheshire



See President's Podium