It is disappointing that positions on the Legal Services Bill are becoming entrenched. Important legislation can only be improved by constructive input from stakeholders. The Legal Services Bill provides a blueprint for the regulation of the legal profession for the next generation, and we should all be working together to make sure we get it absolutely right.

The House of Lords made a number of important amendments, but none of them affected the underlying structure of the legislation. The Bar Council and the Law Society have supported that structure throughout. But the Government has given us no credit; it has simply opposed our suggested improvements to the detail – without even seeking to engage us in constructive debate.

The improvements we suggested were not 'wrecking amendments' as one of them was described by Vera Baird MP on second reading in the Commons. Our objective is to make sure that the structure works properly in the public interest.

Take complaints-handling as an example. We want to ensure that the system of complaints against barristers is as cheap and effective as possible, and does not duplicate effort. The complex complaints that are generally made against barristers cannot be dealt with in the absence of an expert view of the legal position. The Office of Legal Complaints (OLC) will not be able to decide anything without such a view. The Lords amendment allowed the OLC to delegate the handling of such complaints to the Bar Standards Board (BSB), the independent ring-fenced regulator that the Bar Council has established. It did not force it to do so. Plainly, it would only do so where the BSB was doing a good job (which it has been said to be doing in successive Ombudsman's reports). The BSB has access to the free services of the experts from the profession in all the fields in which barristers work and complaints are made. The OLC obviously cannot fairly handle complaints against, for example, an intellectual property barrister, without such expert input. Moreover, the BSB never takes a disciplinary decision without agreement from the lay members of its complaints committee – so this is not a case of lawyers judging their own, as has been so often (inaccurately) stated.

In short, the structure we propose will benefit users of legal services and consumers in two specific ways:

- first, the whole system will be cheaper because the OLC will not have to pay for outside experts to advise on complaints – the BSB will do so for free; and

- second, complex complaints are more likely to be found to be justified if they actually are. The OLC is likely to reject a complaint raising a difficult issue of barrister judgment, because its staff would not have the expertise to know whether the barrister was actually in the wrong. The BSB will have readily-available expertise to ensure that the complaint is accurately resolved.

Take another example. The Legal Services Board (LSB) as oversight regulator should only intervene with the ring-fenced front-line regulators if something has gone seriously wrong. The House of Lords amended the Bill to provide an appropriate threshold for intervention to avoid costly duplicative regulation. For some reason, the Government wants the LSB to be able to intervene on the basis of any adverse impact on any of the regulatory objectives, however much that impact may be counter-balanced by advantages to other statutory objectives. This will result in expensive micro-management by an oversight regulator. The costs, of course, will be borne by the consumer, since the Government is not making any contribution to the LSB's running expenses.

So what is to be done? I am sure there are sensible compromises out there, upon which rational stakeholders will be able to agree. I urge the Government to abandon its policy of attrition, and to initiate urgent discussions with stakeholders to agree the best way forward for consumers and the legal profession alike. The Bill is simply too important to be formulated by dogma rather than debate.

Geoffrey Vos QC is chairman of the Bar Council.