Shah: Confident in KCA process for managing conflicts
MPs yesterday grilled the prospective chair of the Legal Services Board (LSB) over a potential conflict of interest with her existing role as chair of the King’s Counsel Appointments (KCA) selection panel.
Asked by justice select committee chair Andy Slaughter MP whether she had considered “stepping down now” from the KCA role, , Monisha Shah said she had “made a commitment” to stay in the job until the end of next year.
The committee was holding a pre-appointment hearing with the government’s preferred candidate for chair of the LSB, having done this same earlier this month with Richard Blakeway [1], its preferred candidate for chair of the Office for Legal Complaints, the Legal Ombudsman’s governing board. It then backed his appointment.
Mr Slaughter said: “I think what’s possibly concerning us, although they’re obviously different – the LSB and the KC appointments process – is that they’re both in the legal field, they can be sensitive or contentious in that way and there’s a potential for conflicts to arise.
“I know you’ve said you’re not going to pursue your role in the KC appointments process from the end of next year, but have you considered whether it would be appropriate for you to stand down from that now?”
Ms Shah replied the KCA was “in the middle of a competition”, she had “made a commitment to serving until the end of next year” and she believed the panel’s process for the management of conflicts of interest was “extremely clear”. She was “very confident” in it.
“I might remind the committee that on the panel we also have serving barristers and serving solicitors who also need to manage their day-to-day conflicts and so the process is in fact very robust.
“I would assure the committee that if I thought that the conflict was unmanageable or detrimental to either of the organisations, I would certainly step down.”
Labour MP Warinder Juss, a solicitor who raised the first question about a potential conflict of interest, asked: “How would you feel about advocating fundamental reform of the Bar and criticising the approach of the Bar Council? Would you be comfortable in doing that in your role as chair of the Legal Services Board?”
Ms Shah responded that the role of KCA was to assess individual applications, while the LSB did not intervene in individual cases. “That’s a key point of difference between the two roles.”
The panel relied on information from its assessors and “there is absolutely no scope for external evidence to be brought into that”.
Mr Juss said that last November the KCA’s complaints committee recommended various changes for future competitions and asked if they had been implemented.
Ms Shah said the reforms, which concerned response times and the recusal process, had been implemented by KCA’s secretariat.
She said complaints were anonymised so that if applicants wanted to reapply, they would not be prejudiced.
In the case of one application, even though it had not been decided, Ms Shah said she took the decision to recuse herself because she knew the name of the applicant. She did this voluntarily and it was “commended by the complaints committee”.
Responding to a question from Mr Slaughter, who mentioned that now was a “difficult time” for the LSB, she said: “I am confident that I have the time to do this role. I believe that I am able and will be able to add value to the work of the LSB.
“I do appreciate that it is a difficult time, but I feel very encouraged that there is a new chief executive in place [Richard Orpin] and there is a direction forward.
“I think the public bodies review [of the LSB, announced last month [2]] comes at a good time for us to consider together what the future direction of the LSB should be.”
Ms Shah worked as a sales director at BBC Worldwide before serving on a wide range of arts, media, education and regulatory boards.
As well as chairing the KCA panel from 2022, she is chair of the Publishers’ Licensing Services, co-chair of the Copyright Licensing Agency, and a board director and council member at the Advertising Standards Authority.