Quangos rarely lobby for their remit to be pruned and the legal sector is no exception. So last week we saw an exasperated Law Society call on the £5m-a-year Legal Services Board to begin downsizing, now that most of the reforms in the Legal Services Act are coming to fruition. Instead, the umbrella regulator has been promoting high-profile seminars on the Legal Education and Training Review that one might have thought were far more squarely in the domain of the bodies actually conducting the review.

This week, the Legal Ombudsman has called for a huge increase (though it describes the 66% rise as ‘modest’) in both the amount of compensation it can award against lawyers, as well as the time limits within which it can accept complaints.

Its arguments are not wholly compelling. For example, the ombudsman rather coyly admits that it has ordered a remedy exceeding £20,000 in only ‘a handful’ of cases (five?), and has found the £30,000 limit insufficient ‘on a number of occasions’ (one?). What are the courts for?

Every public body can produce impressive arguments why its growth, or even an increase in its powers, is indispensable to the public interest. And they generally do.

However, ministers must be wary of accepting those arguments without rigorously interrogating them.