The powers of the proposed legal services board (LSB) to micro-manage the activities of frontline regulators like the Law Society and Bar Council will 'drive a coach and horses through the principle of an independent profession', the Shadow Attorney-General warned last week.

Dominic Grieve MP said he was 'sorry we lost the battle' for self-regulation and promised that the Conservatives will argue over the detail of the LSB's powers when the Legal Services Bill is before Parliament.


Speaking at St Paul Travelers' annual On Risk conference, he said he hoped the LSB would have a light touch, but that he was worried there was nothing to stop a 'proactive LSB tinkering away' as it wants with the regulators. However, he largely backed alternative business structures, although he expressed doubts over non-lawyer ownership.


Mr Grieve's concerns over the LSB were echoed in evidence given last week to the joint parliamentary committee examining the draft Legal Services Bill by the Law Society. Vice-President Fiona Woolf said: 'There are many provisions in the draft Bill that combine together to create a very heavy-handed primary regulator, rather than the supervisory regulator that Sir David Clementi and the Lord Chancellor led us to expect.'


Ms Woolf told MPs and peers that this would undermine the independence of the profession and that it is already being used as an excuse to make negotiations over access to foreign legal markets more difficult.


She argued that the combination of the powers of direction and censure, coupled with the power to remove the designation of an approved regulator, would give the LSB 'more than adequate supervisory and enforcement powers'.


President Kevin Martin said issues such as driving up standards, improving the quality of service, and education and training 'are not going to be resolved by more targets, more fines, more looking over the shoulder'.


Meanwhile, in his evidence, Sir David Clementi welcomed the Bill but said he was concerned by how often the secretary of state appears in it 'as somebody who is making decisions'. Highlighting this as a question of independence, he said technical matters should be the preserve of the LSB, leaving matters of 'great public policy' to the secretary of state.