The Law Society's ability to represent City lawyers has again been called into question after it emerged that Chancery Lane failed to respond to a major Government consultation with the excuse that it "cannot respond to everything".

The Law Society, which has an annual budget of more than £100m, did not make the deadline for replies to the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) consultation paper early last month on the future of US-style class actions in the UK.

The Law Society initially put the lack of a response down to the fact that it could not respond to every government paper, but subsequently claimed that it had not received notification of the consultation. It has since written a letter informing the DTI of its views on the main issues raised.

Linklaters head of advocacy Mark Humphries commented: "On quite an important issue like this I would expect the representative part of the Law Society to say something, as it is likely to have quite an impact on lawyers."

However, The City of London Law Society did respond to the consultation.

It said only designated bodies should fund and represent group actions and recommended the introduction of a "permission stage" to weed out inappropriate group claims.

News of the Law Society's failure to respond to the consultation comes in the same week its chief executive, Desmond Hudson, issued a statement criticising Halifax's launch of a legal arm.

Hudson incorrectly linked the bank with a number of alleged complaints relating to the Goldfish credit card, which is actually owned by Morgan Stanley.

Hudson's statement was sent out last Friday (27 October).

It said: "Let's hope Halifax has learned lessons from its recent Goldfish credit card fiasco which left consumers so disappointed and frustrated."