The head of the watchdog that will decide whether the Solicitors Regulation Authority should regulate legal executives has given the strongest possible indication he would not oppose the change.

Matthew Hill, chief executive of the Legal Services Board, stopped short of saying the SRA would do a better job than the current regulator CILEx Regulation, but spoke glowingly of how well the solicitors’ regulator performs.

Giving evidence to the justice committee yesterday, Hill said the SRA is the ‘most sophisticated, mature, best-resourced and arguably most effective regulator in our sector’.

His words will be seen as a sign that the LSB would look positively on the controversial proposal for the SRA to regulate around 9,000 legal executives. Both the SRA and the representative body CILEX have finished consultations on merging the regulation of the professions and – assuming they both want to push ahead with the plan – they would need to present their case to the LSB for approval.

Conservative MP James Daly, a member of the justice committee, last week accused CILEX of trying to destroy the solicitor profession by changing the title of legal executives to ‘chartered lawyer’.

Yesterday he pressed SRA leaders appearing before the committee on why they appeared so keen on adopting regulation of another sector.

Daly said: ‘It seems to me from some of the statements that have been made that the [SRA] has essentially put the cart before the horse and said ‘this is something we will do and we will essentially go through the motions of having a consultation because that appears to give a public gloss to this.

‘It is nothing to do with your organisation at all. CILEX are regulated perfectly well by another body – why on earth would you want to do this?’

SRA chief executive Paul Philip said there were ‘synergies’ between solicitors and legal executives and pointed out that 75% of legal executives work in firms regulated by the SRA.

Daly said this amounted to a ‘very large power grab’ and that the SRA was basically saying that solicitors should be regulated exactly the same as paralegals and non-solicitors, creating what he described as ‘one legal profession by the back door’.

Philip denied that was true, adding: ‘We never canvassed this initiative – it was totally the initiative of CILEX who approached us.’

He admitted that the SRA did not have a ‘detailed discussion’ with CILEx Regulation until after making a proposal to assume responsibility for its role and could not remember if the organisation had consulted the Law Society after being approached by CILEX.

Law Society president Nick Emmerson said the solicitors' representative body was 'very strongly against' the idea of merging regulation of the professions.

He added: 'If you go into the market and you are not a solicitor and call yourself a chartered lawyer, and you're regulated by the SRA, would [a client] think that is a solicitor or a legal executive? It will bring confusion to the market.'

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