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Stephen Larcombe has it spot on. The CMA and the rest have decided that so-called competition can be achieved through deregulation and price comparison.
Where else has this combination succeeded to make access to professional services more affordable or better for the consumers?
There is an obsession-an unhealthy fetish-with lawyers and access to the law, which fails to recognise that the great reform programme-Legal Services Act and the smashing of legal aid has failed. For instance referrals to mediation in family cases has fallen and continues to do so.
Instead of joining in the CMA/LSB/SRA rhetoric I would urge our so-called representative bodies-and everyone else who cares-to enforce the mantra that Access to Justice is a right of each citizen and that turning the legal profession into the equivalent of the Penny Bazaar does not achieve the aim of assuring access to justice for each citizen.
The propaganda of the Law Superstore must be challenged. After all despite its insistence that its role is to help the consumer-it is, of course, only interested in its own profit.