Watchdog barks

It’s a decade since justice secretary Chris Grayling rebuffed a recommendation from super-regulator the Legal Services Board that will-writing should be regulated. Evidence of ‘consumer detriment’ in the will-writing market did not adequately demonstrate that bringing will-writing activities within the definition of reserved legal activities was the best solution. 

As with privatising probation and banning books in prisons, Grayling thereby demonstrated his unerring capacity for getting it wrong. ‘Anti-regulation dogma has triumphed over what is in the best interests of consumers,’ the Legal Services Consumer Panel fumed.

The doctrinaire Grayling’s intransigence muted the debate on wills regulation, pending the absence of any realistic chance of reform. So it was a surprise for solicitors this week when the Competition and Markets Authority launched a consumer enforcement investigation focusing on will-writing, pre-paid probate plans and online divorce.

With so much political attention amid the cost-of-living crisis focused on malfunctioning markets – rocketing grocery prices anyone? – the CMA has an awful lot on its plate (sic). So why now?

One prompt was surely City watchdog the Financial Conduct Authority’s move last year to regulate pre-paid funeral plans. Back in February this year, too, the FCA fired a warning on pre-paid probate plans.

Death is à la mode among regulators.  But then so is marriage – or rather, its demise. The introduction of no-fault divorce, while generally regarded as a welcome development, is a spur to unregulated providers seeking to muscle in on an estranged couple’s DIY. Many suspect this will have predictable results.

The Law Society’s protestations are far too easily dismissed as special pleading. On wills, so often, it is solicitors who clear up the mess left by unregulated providers when it would have been much cheaper for the hapless consumer (who mistakenly supposes they are protected anyway) to have gone to a solicitor in the first place.

Whatever the CMA uncovers, let us hope policymakers take proper note of the potential ramifications for future oversight. As we have seen in the sectors of energy and water supply – to name just two of many – tougher regulation suddenly got very popular with the public.