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Sorry but this article is a doomed attempt to defend the indefensible.

By Act of Parliament the SRA is supposed to be independent of the Law Society. This is in order to protect the public, by preventing a conflict of interests. We all know what happens to solicitors who ignore the rules on conflicts of interest.

Yet the Law Society for several years appears to have deliberately flouted the law, persisting in arrangements which ensured that the SRA was improperly under its control. This appears to have been done so as to perpetuate and exploit a conflict of interests which Parliament had outlawed. The LSB found that "the SRA’s effectiveness was impaired" by the Law Society's conduct.

It is simply mind-boggling that such a thing could have happened.

Was the LSB supposed to ignore this? Was it supposed to say, as the author of this article seems to argue, that because there are other problems in the world, this one should be glossed over? Hardly. By issuing a public rebuke it has merely done its job, and none too soon.

This is the sort of disgrace that should lead to senior office holders at the Law Society resigning. There should be an investigation into how it could have happened.

At the same time the Society should consider how it came to be condemned by the Competition Appeal Tribunal for rigging the training market, and by the Advertising Standards Authority for misleading consumers. It should investigate the management failures that led to the Veyo scandal.

Is there a more disfunctional organisation in the UK than the Law Society? Is there another which goes through scandal after scandal without anyone being held accountable? I cannot think of one.

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