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Peter Hain said: '‘I am not a surrogate lawyer and I was not acting as one.' He is indeed fortunate that this is the case and that he is not a member of a regulated legal profession, in particular that he is not a solicitor. Had a solicitor done what he did, then I surmise that the SRA and the SDT would have taken a significantly different approach, with a significantly different outcome, than was the case with the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Whatever his motives were, his statement in the Lords, using parliamentary privilege, was ill judged and society is entitled to expect better of someone who has been in politics as long as he has.