MoJ puts regulation shake-up on hold

The government has dampened speculation about an imminent review of legal services regulation by extending indefinitely a consultation on the subject.

Officials told the Gazette that a call for evidence that was supposed to close last week is still open – and that there is no timetable for responding. 

The Ministry of Justice asked for views on the future of legal services regulation in June, with the consultation ending on 2 September. That date has been extended to allow further contributions, with the Legal Services Board and Bar Standards Board among those yet to respond.

The relaxed timetable raises doubts about the government’s appetite for re-drawing the 2007 Legal Services Act.

Responses so far have indicated widely differing stances, with the Law Society urging ‘relatively minor’ change and the Legal Services Consumer Panel and SRA calling for a radical overhaul.

The Society said its recommendations could yield ‘a more proportionate regime which retains accountability and builds on the expertise of the profession’.

Different professions should continue to be responsible for the regulation of their members, the Society said. Governance and structural arrangements should be modified so that the Society takes on direct responsibility for training and authorisation to practise, and to ensure procedures are flexible enough to take account of the realities of different types of practice.

Investigation and prosecution of offences would be undertaken at arm’s length by an operational arm of the Society with independent decision-making powers, but reporting directly to the Society.

Meanwhile, a reformed Legal Services Board, ‘chaired by a judge and with a significantly reduced staff’, should oversee the work of professional bodies. The consumer panel should be abolished.

‘We do not consider that an independent regulator or regulators are an appropriate solution,’ the Society said. ‘There is no evidence to suggest that the professional bodies cannot take decisions in the public interest about standards and qualification.

‘There is also no evidence to suggest that independent regulators are more capable of ensuring that there is independence of decision-making in respect of decisions to prosecute individual cases. The cost of such change would be substantial and there is no evidence that it is in the public interest.’

The SRA, by contrast, called for rationalisation of what it called the ‘clumsy, costly and obscure’ system of regulating legal services, and proposed structural separation of the regulator and the Law Society.