Moving to a single regulator for legal services is a ‘live conversation’ in Whitehall and at Westminster, the chair of the Solicitors Regulation Authority said today. However, the SRA believes securing legislative time remains a significant hurdle to overcome when the government is facing bigger and competing priorities.

‘There is an appetite to try and move more in that direction,’ Anna Bradley told the SRA’s annual compliance officers conference in Birmingham this morning. ‘This is a live conversation at Westminster and Whitehall.’

The SRA would be the natural choice to assume oversight of a sector currently superintended by nine approved regulators. Earlier this year it was controversially approached by the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives to take over regulation of CILEX members from CILEx Regulation. 

‘Is it time for a single regulator? Possibly,’ agreed SRA chief executive Paul Philip in the Q&A session which kicked off the conference. But Philip believes this will not happen quickly. '[Depending] on the politics of the day there is always something more pressing to move to,' he said. 

SRA chief exec Paul Philip Q&A

SRA chief executive Paul Philip in the Q&A session at the conference

Phillip was asked by the session’s chair, BBC journalist Clive Myrie, about the worsening economic climate for law firms and their clients. Phillips said they face potentially the worst backdrop since the aftermath of the banking crisis in 2008/9. ‘Law firms are particularly resilient,’ he noted. ‘At that time we were particularly concerned with misuse of client accounts. When things get hard we need to pay close attention to the client account because there is a natural tendency to try and use it to get by – not stealing, but using it to pay bills and putting [the money] back in. That’s major issue for us.’

Asked about the market for professional indemnity insurance, Phillip said the regulator sees no evidence of ‘market failure’ – with firms more likely to secure cover last year than they were the year before. Bradley said the regulator will keep a ‘close eye’ on the PII market.

Another issue on the SRA’s agenda is the ethnic disparities which have been exposed in pass rates for the Solicitors Qualifying Examination, which the regulator has committed to investigate. White candidates in the first cohorts significantly outperformed black and Asian candidates.

‘We’ve got what I would describe as a very skewed cohort who have gone through SQE1 and SQE2 so far,’ said Bradley. ‘It’s not a representative sample. It will be another 12-18 months before we are able to draw solid conclusions about where and whether SQE does make a difference to diverse candidates.’

Research on reasons for the disparities will land on the regulator’s desk 'at about the same time as stronger datasets' that will enable the SRA to consider next steps, she added.

 

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