Root-and-branch reform of legal services regulation has been mooted several times since the advent of the byzantine regime created by the Legal Services Act 2007. It might well have happened, too, had Michael Gove not been sacked as lord chancellor by Theresa May in a bout of internecine warfare back in 2016. The comprehensive review Gove signalled a few months earlier expired with him. Most subsequent office-holders have shown little interest.
Is momentum building again? Perhaps.
History repeated itself last year when another Conservative lord chancellor, Alex Chalk, told the Commons justice committee that there was ‘a growing case for a review of the act’. Chalk asked his department to advise on timing, but he too was packing his bags at Petty France soon afterwards.
Shabana Mahmood is probably more concerned with emptying our prisons in anticipation of a renewed squeeze on justice spending. But she will not be ignorant of the Axiom Ince and SSB debacles, and least of all the Horizon scandal.
Mahmood ought to be cognisant, too, of an intriguing contribution to the debate by the lord chief justice. Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill must stay out of the party-political arena, of course, but she can hardly be apolitical per se. Delivering the Sir Henry Brooke lecture, the LCJ stressed that ‘whether there is a review [of the current regulatory regime]… is clearly a matter for government’. However, Lady Carr then proceeded to map out the scope of such an exercise and ‘points that might beneficially be explored’.
Most notably, she pointed to the need to ascertain whether there is evidence ‘that professional and ethical standards have declined overall in the last 20 years, or at least since the post-LSA 2007 regulatory structure’. And if there is such evidence, ‘is the regulatory structure the cause of that decline?
‘It is argued outside the legal environment that poor behaviour is a symptom of poor environments,’ she added. ‘Is that the case here?’
In her peroration, the LCJ reiterated that these are ‘questions that might be usefully be grasped’. To me, that looks like a sharp nudge in the ribs for the Ministry of Justice.
If the MoJ needs another nudge, it is likely to be provided (and rather more violently) by the final report of the Post Office Inquiry.
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