Reflecting on the Legal Services (Scotland) Bill to date – with its final stage 3 debate in October - I am struck with a stark and regrettable conclusion. Why has the Scottish Government placed the pecuniary interests of the few before creating opportunities for the many in Scotland?

With Lord Gill’s civil courts report sitting on the shelf, the Scottish Ministers could have chosen to radically improve our civil justice system for all members of our society. Alternatively, they could have chosen to introduce a major bill to challenge social inequality in Scotland.

In a new book, entitled The Spirit Level, two epidemiologists demonstrate that societies more equal than ours enjoy better physical and mental health, lower homicide rates, fewer drug problems, fewer teenage births, higher maths and literacy scores, higher standards of child wellbeing, lower obesity rates and fewer people in prison.

Yet as the current session of our Parliament entered its twilight, the Minister for Community Safety, Fergus Ewing MSP, chose to champion a Legal Services Bill. A bill that facilitates a ‘lighter-touch’ approach to legal services regulation. Primarily, to benefit and accommodate the ‘needs’ of a handful of big firms; and more particulary, a tiny number of wealthy folk within those firms.

Out of all of things that needed to be fixed in our legal system and communities, the Scottish Government chose to give itself the right to manage legal services regulation, and more bizarrely, as regards the membership functions of the Law Society of Scotland, to dictate who should represent its members. Micro-management writ large.

To be clear, we’re not talking about regulatory functions – where we already have a 50/50 split between solicitors and non-solicitors on all regulatory committees of the Society – this is about membership services. What next, employers on the committees of trade unions?

And so we come back to a fundamental question. Why on earth is this stuff the top priority for the Minister for Community Safety and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice?

We know the ‘honeymoon period’ for the new Holyrood administration is over. Could it be that the Scottish Ministers have been unpacking their honeymoon suitcases for the last wee while, only to find they are now empty policy wise?

We have a lack of consistency. For example, while the Scottish Government evidently see statutory regulation of legal services as a top priority, when it comes to non-professions they favour no regulation whatsoever. Some property factors cause major consumer detriment to vulnerable consumers in Scotland, yet the Scottish Government advocate ‘voluntary accreditation’.

After a 18 month ‘FOI’ battle, the Sunday Herald revealed yesterday that First Minister Alex Salmond supported Fred ‘The Shred’ Goodwin in his reckless bid for the Dutch bank ABN Amro in 2007. Our First Minister offered the then Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) chief executive "any assistance my office can provide", and said it would be in Scotland’s best interests for RBS to succeed with the takeover attempt. Fred’s decision helped see RBS suffer the biggest loss in UK corporate history; £28bn in 2008.

What does this tell us? That the Scottish Government were fully signed up to the ‘light touch’ approach to regulation. While most major economies around the world have now ditched this flawed approach, the Scottish Government is foisting it upon Scotland’s legal system. It lives and breathes in Scotland. Why don’t we learn from history? And for that matter, why don’t we practice what we preach?

Housing Minister, Alex Neil MSP, has reportedly made a capital gain of almost £100,000 from the sale of his second Edinburgh home, paid for by a second home allowance funded by the taxpayer. Yet, when Scots receive legal aid to prevent the repossession of their homes, the legal aid board expect them to pay all of that money back if they have made a notional capital gain in saving their home.

When I met Housing Minister Alex Neil last year, I argued that this could be unfair as financially poor households were being told to pay back hundreds of pounds in legal aid when they were living on breadline benefits. The Housing Minister disagreed. He told me that it was morally right that those who had made a notional capital gain with the help of public funds should pay that money back. Alex Neil has now made an actual capital gain of almost £100,000 and not paid a penny back to the taxpayer.

We need to help the needy not the greedy in Scotland. We need to implement reforms that can help the many not the few. And we need to get our priorities right. Let’s tackle social injustice; let’s tackle barriers to civil and criminal justice; and let’s remember that the greatest inequality in our society is the poverty of opportunity.

Mike