The legal profession will be stripped of its powers to investigate complaints against lawyers under sweeping proposals published yesterday.

A new Legal Services Board would also be created to replace the web of 21 different regulators, which the government has called "outdated, inflexible, over-complex and insufficiently accountable or transparent".
The report, produced by Sir David Clementi, former Bank of England deputy governor, would also require the Law Society and the Bar Council to separate their regulatory function from the role they play in representing lawyers' interests.