Episode Podcast 42: Oversight Regulation

Great.

So now I've introduced you both and we're here to talk about oversight regulation.

It's a term that some people won't understand.

I introduced it briefly, but Alan, I'm going to start with you and tell us from your perspective what oversight regulation is and who you oversee at the PSA.

Well, put most simply, oversight regulation, as you said yourself, Marcial, is all about regulating the regulators.

So oversight bodies don't regulate people or organisations directly.

Instead, they ask the question, is this regulator doing its job properly? And is it protecting the public effectively? So it might be best to think of it as a safety net for the regulatory system.

At the PSA, we oversee 10 statutory regulators of health and care professionals across the UK, and they cover, between them, over 2 million registrants, such as doctors, nurses, dentists, social workers, and paramedics.

And we carry out annual reviews of these regulators and publish reports about their performance.

We also undertake policy work to improve the effectiveness of regulation.

So we do regulate the regulators, but ultimately we're doing that for one reason, and that is to protect the public.

Okay, so that's a lot of organisations you oversee, and you mentioned 2 million registrants of those regulators in turn.

Monisha, turning to you, I've described the LSB as the oversight regulator of the legal profession, but I think more correctly, you regulate legal services in England and Wales, and you work within a complicated regulatory framework.

So can you briefly tell us how legal services regulation is structured and who the Legal Services Board oversees?

Well, the Legal Services Act established the framework for legal services regulation in 2007.

And again, very simply, there are eight approved regulators across the legal services sector.

They are collectively responsible for regulating over probably 197,000 lawyers who practice in England and Wales.

So depending on the kind of lawyer or law firm you are, you may be regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority or the Bar Standards Board or the Cost Lawyers Standards Board and so on.

The LSB is the statutory regulator which oversees all of those eight approved regulators.

So our remit extends across essentially all of the regulated legal services sector in England and Wales.

We also regulate the Solicitor's Disciplinary Tribunal and the Office for Legal Complaints, which administers the Legal Ombudsman Scheme.

Like Alan said, as an oversight regulator, our role is to look across this regulatory system as a whole and to ensure that it is working in the public interest.

And we work to ensure that the frontline regulators are delivering the nine regulatory objectives which are set by Parliament.

These include protecting consumers, supporting the rule of law, improving access to justice, and maintaining public confidence in legal services.

Fantastic.