No doubt the ears of a few chastened solicitors will have perked up when Solicitors Regulation Authority chair Anna Bradley suggested that many of the issues around the Axiom Ince debacle were ‘history’.
Bradley told the SRA’s compliance conference and its 1,000-plus delegates that the profession could move on now that the systems and processes which failed to prevent client money from disappearing were now remedied.
One wonders how this will have gone down with the many firms that have been fined this year for historical AML breaches, even where they had already remedied the mistakes.
Bradley’s appearance, alongside chief executive Paul Philip, was a carefully stage-managed event, in which questions from the floor were curiously ruled out due to unexplained logistical issues. Instead, delegates could submit questions online, which were then vetted by the host before they were put to the SRA chiefs.
This was a wasted opportunity. A missed chance to admit that more could have been done to protect client money and start to rebuild trust and confidence in the regulators.
Bradley is of course wrong to say these issues are history. They are very much current for the sole practitioners asked to fork out more than £2,000 to prop up the compensation fund which has paid out to so many Axiom Ince clients left out of pocket. They are current for the firms about to be hit with a glut of proposals (the end of the client account, potentially among them) which will turn their business models upside down. They are current for a solicitors profession being asked to put their trust in the same leadership team which presided over the Axiom Ince mistakes and steadfastly refuses to take any responsibility for them.
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During a media briefing during the conference, Bradley and Philip were asked outright: will you apologise for what has happened? Neither was willing to, with Bradley repeating the line: ‘We have said what we are going to say.’ If an apology was out the question, you could forget about any resignations: both Philip and Bradley confirmed they had no intention to step aside.
The SRA had said it disagreed with a lot of the report but its leaders could not identify specifically which part was so objectionable. Philip suggested the Legal Services Board's report – written by an independent firm of solicitors remember – consisted only of opinions and no findings of fact.
He denied the SRA should be held responsible for what happened, adding: ‘If you want someone to blame you have to blame the people subject to criminal investigations.’
The trouble with the ‘nothing-to-see-here’ stance is that the profession sees plenty. Solicitors want to know why multiple opportunities to probe further into Axiom’s accounts were missed, and why the firm was allowed to trade with access to the client account even when serious concerns were established. How can we move on when those in charge cannot acknowledge their culpability or explain exactly what the report has got wrong?
Philip had previously remarked how the public want their solicitor to show honesty, integrity and high levels of service. Sometimes, he added without irony, those providing a service cannot spot for themselves when they have done something wrong. On that, the profession would surely agree with him.
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