[2] In Wingate and Another v Solicitors Regulation Authority; Solicitors Regulation Authority v Malins [2018] EWCA Civ 366 ('Wingate'), Jackson LJ (with whom Sharp LJ and Singh LJ agreed), under the heading 'Honesty, integrity and related concepts' provided an exposition of the law in relation to these concepts. It is a long exposition, but worth setting out in full.
At the start that of the exposition, Jackson LJ said, at paragraph 59,
'This part of the judgment is not a Socratic quest for ultimate truth. It is simply an examination of what meaning the law ascribes “honesty”, “integrity” and related concepts.'
Jackson LJ then addressed:
(1) ' honesty' / 'dishonesty' first, before turning to,
(2) 'integrity'.
As to 'dishonesty', Jackson LJ in Wingate said, at paragrpahs 60 to 94:
'60. The Theft Act 1968 introduced the concept of “dishonesty” as one element of the offence of theft. The court therefore had to explain what that term meant. In R v Ghosh [1982] QB 1053 the Court of Appeal explained it as follows at p 1064D–E:
“In determining whether the prosecution has proved that the defendant was acting dishonestly, a jury must first of all decide whether according to the ordinary standards of reasonable and honest people what was done was dishonest. If it was not dishonest by those standards, that is the end of the matter and the prosecution fails.
“If it was dishonest by those standards, then the jury must consider whether the defendant himself must have realised that what he was doing was by those standards dishonest.”
61. I shall refer to the two elements of dishonesty which the Court of Appeal identified in R v Ghosh as “element 1” and “element 2”.
62. All professions have codes of conduct and procedures for dealing with members who fail to live up to the expected standards. There is a vast body of literature about the professions, some of which is summarised in R Lason & D Susskind, The Future of the Professions (Oxford University Press) (2015). I too have touched upon some of that literature in a recent lecture to the Professional Negligence Bar Association (“The Professions: Power, Privilege and Legal Liability”, 21 April 2015, on the Judiciary Website). I do not base any part of this judgment on that literature. I do note, however, that an enduring feature of professional codes of conduct is that they set higher standards for their members than the general norms of society.
63. In some instances, “dishonesty” is not defined as a specific offence under a professional code of conduct. Nevertheless, any tribunal considering allegations of misconduct will be astute to identify whether or not there was dishonesty. If the respondent was dishonest, the tribunal will reflect that in the sanction which it imposes.
64. Under the Solicitors’ Practice Rules 1990 the charge most often laid against errant solicitors was “conduct unbefitting a solicitor”. If that charge was proved, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal would assess the gravity of the offending conduct and would, in particular, consider whether that conduct involved dishonesty. In Bolton v Law Society [1994] 1 WLR 512 a solicitor acting in a transaction for the sale of a house received a sum advanced to the prospective purchaser by a building society. Instead of retaining the sum in his client account, he disbursed the money in anticipation of completion. The sale was not completed and security documentation in the building society's favour was never executed. On investigation by the Solicitors Complaints Bureau the shortage on the client account was discovered and promptly made good by the solicitor. He was charged with “conduct unbefitting a solicitor”. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found that allegation proved. The tribunal held that the solicitor's conduct, whilst not deliberately dishonest, was naive and foolish, and that although such conduct would normally be regarded very seriously so as to merit being struck off the Roll, in the circumstances the appropriate penalty was suspension from practice for two years. The Divisional Court on appeal quashed the order for suspension and substituted a fine. The Court of Appeal held that the Divisional Court had erred and ought not to have interfered with the decision of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. Sir Thomas Bingham MR then stated the guiding principles as follows at p 518A–D:
“It is required of lawyers practising in this country that they should discharge their professional duties with integrity, probity and complete trustworthiness. That requirement applies as much to barristers as it does to solicitors.”
“Any solicitor who is shown to have discharged his professional duties with anything less than complete integrity, probity and trustworthiness must expect severe sanctions to be imposed upon him by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. Lapses from the required high standard may, of course, take different forms and be of varying degrees. The most serious involves proven dishonesty, whether or not leading to criminal proceedings and criminal penalties. In such cases the tribunal has almost invariably, no matter how strong the mitigation advanced for the solicitor, ordered that he be struck off the Roll of Solicitors. Only infrequently, particularly in recent years, has it been willing to order the restoration to the Roll of a solicitor against whom serious dishonesty had been established, even after a passage of years, and even where the solicitor had made every effort to re-establish himself and redeem his reputation. If a solicitor is not shown to have acted dishonestly, but is shown to have fallen below the required standards of integrity, probity and trustworthiness, his lapse is less serious but it remains very serious indeed in a member of a profession whose reputation depends upon trust. A striking off order will not necessarily follow in such a case, but it may well.”
65. In Twinsectra Ltd v Yardley [2002] 2 AC 164 the issue arose whether a solicitor, L, had dishonestly assisted in a breach of trust. In acquitting L of dishonesty the House of Lords adopted the same two-stage approach as was set out in R v Ghosh. In relation to element 2, Lord Hutton (with whom Lord Slynn of Hadley and Lord Steyn agreed) observed at para 35: “the defendant must himself appreciate that what he was doing was dishonest by the standards of honest and reasonable men.”
66. In Hoodless v Financial Services Authority [2003] UKFTT 7 the applicant challenged decisions by the FSA to withdraw their approvals to perform the functions of investment adviser and investment management. The criteria for assessing the fitness of approved persons were set out in the FSA's handbook. They included “honesty, integrity and reputation”. In considering these criteria, the Financial Services and Markets Tribunal referred to the decisions in R v Ghosh and the Twinsectra case. The tribunal stated at para 19:
“It may be asked whether the combined test is really appropriate in the present context, where one of the statutory objectives is the protection of consumers. It might be thought that a purely objective test would be a better protection. But we think it right to adopt the approach urged upon us, since it was not in dispute that we were required, as an additional matter, to consider the applicants’ integrity, which both sides accepted involved the application of objective ethical standards. In our view ‘integrity’ connotes moral soundness, rectitude and steady adherence to an ethical code. A person lacks integrity if unable to appreciate the distinction between what is honest or dishonest by ordinary standards. (This presupposes, of course, circumstances where ordinary standards are clear. Where there are genuinely grey areas, a finding of lack of integrity would not be appropriate.)”
67. In Bultitude v Law Society [2004] EWCA Civ 1853 the Court of Appeal upheld a finding of dishonesty made against a solicitor. The Court of Appeal applied the two-stage test of dishonesty at para 32: “first, did Mr Bultitude act dishonestly by the ordinary standards of reasonable and honest people, and if so; secondly, was he aware that by those standards he was acting dishonestly.”
68. A few months later there was a significant development. In Barlow Clowes International Ltd v Eurotrust International Ltd [2006] 1 WLR 1476 the issue arose whether the respondents had deliberately assisted C to misappropriate investors’ funds. The Privy Council reinterpreted the Twinsectra case in such a way as to eliminate element 2 from the definition of dishonesty, at least in civil proceedings. At paras 10–12 Lord Hoffmann stated:
“10. Although a dishonest state of mind is a subjective mental state, the standard by which the law determines whether it is dishonest is objective. If by ordinary standards a defendant's mental state would be characterised as dishonest, it is irrelevant that the defendant judges by different standards. The Court of Appeal held this to be a correct state of the law and their Lordships agree.
“11. The judge found that during and after June 1987 Mr Henwood strongly suspected that the funds passing through his hands were moneys which Barlow Clowes had received from members of the public who thought that they were subscribing to a scheme of investment in gilt-edged securities. If those suspicions were correct, no honest person could have assisted Mr Clowes and Mr Cramer to dispose of the funds for their personal use. But Mr Henwood consciously decided not to make inquiries because he preferred in his own interest not to run the risk of discovering the truth.
“12. Their Lordships consider that by ordinary standards such a state of mind is dishonest. The judge found that Mr Henwood may well have lived by different standards and seen nothing wrong in what he was doing.”
69. After summarising counsel's submissions and quoting from the Twinsectra case, Lord Hoffmann said at para 15:
“Their Lordships accept that there is an element of ambiguity in these remarks which may have encouraged a belief, expressed in some academic writing, that Twinsectra had departed from the law as previously understood and invited inquiry not merely into the defendant's mental state about the nature of the transaction in which he was participating but also into his views about generally acceptable standards of honesty. But they do not consider that this is what Lord Hutton meant. The reference to ‘what he knows would offend normally accepted standards of honest conduct’ meant only that his knowledge of the transaction had to be such as to render his participation contrary to normally acceptable standards of honest conduct. It did not require that he should have had reflections about what those normally acceptable standards were.”
70. The wider implications of the Barlow Clowes decision were not appreciated at the time.
71. In Bryant v Law Society [2009] 1 WLR 163 HB faced seven charges of conduct unbefitting a solicitor. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found all seven charges proved and held that two of them entailed dishonesty. The Administrative Court set aside the finding of dishonesty. The court distinguished the Barlow Clowes case and held that in the context of the solicitors’ disciplinary proceedings the traditional two-stage test continued to apply. Richards LJ, delivering the judgment of the court, said at para 153:
“In our judgment, the decision of the Court of Appeal in the Bultitude case stands as binding authority that the test to be applied in the context of solicitors’ disciplinary proceedings is the Twinsectra test [2002] 2 AC 164 as it was widely understood before the Barlow Clowes case [2006] 1 WLR 1476, that is a test that includes the separate subjective element. The fact that the Privy Council in the Barlow Clowes case has subsequently placed a different interpretation on the Twinsectra case for the purposes of the accessory liability principle does not alter the substance of the test accepted in the Bultitude case and does not call for any departure from that test.”
72. In 2007 the Solicitors’ Practice Rules 1990 were repealed. In their place the SRA introduced a new and lengthy code of conduct, which not everyone found easy to apply in practice. This underwent numerous revisions before being replaced by the SRA Code of Conduct 2011. The code currently in force is version 19 of the SRA Code of Conduct 2011.
73. Under the code of conduct, as it has existed since 2011, it is normal to charge errant solicitors with breach of one or more of the principles set out in part 1 of the code. Principle 2 requires the solicitor to act with integrity. Principle 6 requires the solicitor to behave in a way that maintains “the trust the public places in you and in the provision of legal services”.
74. None of the principles in part 1 of the code specifically require a solicitor to act honestly. Therefore dishonesty by a solicitor is not a discrete offence under the code. It is an aggravating feature. If the SRA consider that a solicitor's breach of any of the principles involved dishonesty, they will assert that as a separate allegation. If the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal finds there was dishonesty, it will take a more serious view of the breach of principle which has been proved.
75. In Iqbal v Solicitors Regulation Authority [2012] EWHC 3251 (Admin) a solicitor wrongly held out two other persons as his partners, in order to conceal the fact that he was a sole practitioner. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found breaches of principle 6, but did not expressly make a finding of dishonesty. The tribunal ordered that the solicitor be struck off. The Divisional Court upheld that decision. Sir John Thomas P, with whom Silber J agreed, noted that the solicitor's conduct amounted to manifest incompetence. He said at para 23:
“If a solicitor exhibits manifest incompetence, as, in my judgment, the appellant did, then it is impossible to see how the public can have confidence in a person who has exhibited such incompetence. It is difficult to see how a profession such as the medical profession would countenance retaining as a doctor someone who had showed himself to be incompetent. It seems to me that the same must be true of the solicitors’ profession. If in a course of conduct a person manifests incompetence as, in my judgment, the appellant did, then he is not fit to be a solicitor. The only appropriate remedy is to remove him from the roll. It must be recalled that being a solicitor is not a right, but a privilege. The public is entitled not only to solicitors who behave with honesty and integrity, but solicitors in whom they can impose trust by reason of competence.”
76. In Solicitors Regulation Authority v Emeana [2014] ACD 14 solicitors gave the appearance of practising in partnership, when the firm was really a sole practice operated by an inexperienced solicitor. There was other deliberate flouting of the rules. The SRA alleged lack of integrity, but not dishonesty. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal made findings of lack of integrity and imposed heavy fines. On appeal the Administrative Court held that the solicitors should be struck off the Roll.
77. In Brett v Solicitors Regulation Authority [2015] PNLR 2 the Administrative Court held that recklessness by a solicitor in allowing the court to be misled did not amount to dishonesty. But it did amount to a lack of integrity, in breach of rule 1.02.
78. In Solicitors Regulation Authority v Chan [2015] EWHC 2659 (Admin) the respondent solicitors operated schemes which were designed to avoid or mitigate stamp duty land tax. These schemes were highly profitable for the solicitors, but involved considerable risks for the clients. The solicitors did not make proper disclosure to the clients who entered into those schemes. The solicitors were subordinating the interest of their clients to their own financial interests.
79. The Divisional Court, reversing the decision of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, held that the solicitors were guilty of lack of integrity, in breach of principle 2. At para 48 Davis LJ, with whom Ouseley J agreed, said:
“As to want of ‘integrity’, there have been a number of decisions commenting on the import of this word as used in various Regulations. In my view, it serves no purpose to expatiate on its meaning. Want of integrity is capable of being identified as present or not, as the case may be, by an informed tribunal or court by reference to the facts of a particular case.”
80. In Scott v Solicitors Regulation Authority [2016] EWHC 1256 (Admin) the appellant solicitor made improper payments out of his firm's client account. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal held that he was guilty of acting without integrity, in breach of principle 2, but his offending did not involve dishonesty. This was because element 2 of the two-stage test had not been established. The tribunal ordered that the appellant be struck off the Roll of Solicitors. The Administrative Court dismissed his appeal in relation to both the finding of lack of integrity and the sanction imposed.
81. Sharp LJ gave the leading judgment, with which Holroyde J agreed. At para 48 Sharp LJ said:
“The fact that the appellant was, in the event, found not to have been dishonest, plainly did not mean that it was not open to the SDT to conclude that he lacked integrity. There is an obvious distinction between the two concepts, as [counsel for the SRA] submits, and [counsel for the appellant] did not argue to the contrary. A person can lack integrity without being dishonest. One example which applied here, was by being reckless as to the use of various client accounts. As the SDT found, the appellant had not inquired as to the reasons for the improper payments and transfers out of client account; he had not cared at all about what he was instructed to authorise, and he had not shown any steady adherence to any kind of ethical code. Accordingly it was not so much a case of what the appellant thought, but that he neither thought nor cared about what was required by the rules governing his profession, of which he was aware.”
82. In Bar Standards Board v Howd [2017] 4 WLR 54 the appellant barrister made inappropriate sexual contact with females at a chambers party. He was charged with breaches of core duty 3 and core duty 5 under the Bar's Code of Conduct. Core Duty 3 (at the relevant time) required the barrister to act with integrity and honesty. A disciplinary tribunal of the Bar Standards Board found six of the charges proved. Lang J allowed the barrister's appeal. She held that the barrister's misconduct did not fall within the scope of core duties 3 or 5. In relation to core duty 3, she said at para 45: “‘Integrity’ in CD3 takes its colour from the term ‘honesty’ in CD3 and connotes probity and adherence to ethical standards, not inappropriate and offensive social or sexual behaviour.”
83. In Newell-Austin v Solicitors Regulation Authority [2017] Med LR 194 the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal held that the appellant solicitor had acted without integrity but not dishonestly, in that she had allowed her firm to become involved in conveyancing transactions which bore the hallmarks of mortgage fraud. It also held that she had acted dishonestly by providing misleading information to the SRA. It struck her off the Roll. The solicitor argued on appeal that the finding of lack of integrity on the first allegation should be overturned. Morris J dismissed her appeal.
84. At para 47 Morris J derived the following principles from the authorities:
“(1) Integrity connotes moral soundness, rectitude and steady adherence to an ethical code: see the Scott case, paras 38 and 59, both citing the Hoodless case, para 19.
“(2) No purpose is served by seeking to expatiate on the meaning of the term. Lack of integrity is capable of being identified as present or not by an informed tribunal by reference to the facts of a particular case: see the Chan case, para 48.
“(3) Lack of integrity and dishonesty are not synonymous. A person may lack integrity even though not established as being dishonest.”
85. At paras 48–50 Morris J explained that the test for lack of integrity was objective. Nevertheless the state of a person's knowledge was relevant to determining whether they had acted without integrity.
86. Solicitors Regulation Authority v Libby [2017] ACD 81 was one of the cases arising out of Axiom's improper lending. L borrowed a substantial sum from Axiom pursuant to a funding agreement similar to that described in Part 2 above. His firm used most of the money for general purposes, rather than for funding specific claims. The Divisional Court, reversing the decision of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, held that L was in breach of principle 6. Lindblom LJ, delivering the judgment of the court, said at para 35:
“In our judgment, the tribunal did err in failing to address the question of whether the carelessness exhibited by the respondent in dealing with the loan money, and failing to ensure that it was only used for purposes which were permitted, was such as to amount to a breach of Principle 6 of the Principles, notwithstanding the absence of any dishonesty or any lack of integrity on his part. Furthermore, in our judgment on the facts as found by the tribunal in this particular case, the only conclusion that the tribunal could reach was that the conduct complained of did involve such a failure to show the care and attention to be expected of a reasonably competent solicitor as would undermine the trust and confidence that the public would place in a solicitor.”
87. In Williams v Solicitors Regulation Authority [2017] EWHC 1478 (Admin) the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found that the appellant solicitor had made three sets of false representations to third parties. In each instance he had acted in breach of principles 2 and 6, in that he had acted without integrity and in a way that would not maintain the trust of the public in himself and in the provision of legal services. In one instance he had acted dishonestly. The Divisional Court allowed the appellant's appeal against the finding of dishonesty and against one of the findings of want of integrity, on the grounds of serious procedural irregularity.
88. In the course of argument Mostyn J's decision in Malins's case [2017] 4 WLR 85 was discussed. Neither counsel supported Mostyn J's statement that “dishonesty” and “want of integrity” had the same meaning. Carr J, giving the leading judgment, said that she did not agree with Mostyn J's analysis. At para 54 she said:
“I proceed on the basis, both on the authorities and as a matter of principle, that, in the field of solicitors’ regulation, the concepts of dishonesty and want of integrity are indeed separate and distinct. Want of integrity arises when, objectively judged, a solicitor fails to meet the high professional standards to be expected of a solicitor. It does not require the subjective element of conscious wrongdoing.”
89. Sir Brian Leveson P agreed. At para 130 he said:
“As to para 54, lest Mr Williams feel that [his counsel] has failed to take a point which could have been argued, I ought to make it clear that, in the absence of compelling justification, I would reject Mostyn J's description of the concept of want of integrity as second degree dishonesty. Honesty, i e a lack of dishonesty, is a base standard which society requires everyone to meet. Professional standards, however, rightly impose on those who aspire to them a higher obligation to demonstrate integrity in all of their work. There is a real difference between them.”
90. Some four months after the Williams case, the tectonic plates of the legal firmament moved. The Supreme Court disapproved the Court of Appeal's decision in R v Ghosh [1982] QB 1053. In Ivey v Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd (trading as Crockfords Club) [2018] AC 391 Mr Ivey won substantial sums while playing Punto Banco at the defendant's casino. He achieved this by a means known as edge-sorting. The casino refused to pay out and Mr Ivey's claim to recover his winnings failed, because he had been cheating. Mr Ivey considered, wrongly, that what he had been doing did not amount to cheating. That circumstance led the Supreme Court to review the whole concept of dishonesty on a broader basis. At para 60 Lord Hughes JSC said:
“It is plain that in Ghosh [1982] QB 1053 the court concluded that its compromise second leg test was necessary in order to preserve the principle that criminal responsibility for dishonesty must depend on the actual state of mind of the defendant. It asked the question whether ‘dishonestly’, where that word appears in the Theft Act, was intended to characterise a course of conduct or to describe a state of mind. The court gave the following example, at p 1063, which was clearly central to its reasoning: ‘Take for example a man who comes from a country where public transport is free. On his first day here he travels on a bus. He gets off without paying. He never had any intention of paying. His mind is clearly honest; but his conduct, judged objectively by what he has done, is dishonest. It seems to us that in using the word “dishonestly” in the Theft Act 1968, Parliament cannot have intended to catch dishonest conduct in that sense, that is to say conduct to which no moral obloquy could possibly attach.’ But the man in this example would inevitably escape conviction by the application of the (objective) first leg of the Ghosh test. That is because, in order to determine the honesty or otherwise of a person's conduct, one must ask what he knew or believed about the facts affecting the area of activity in which he was engaging. In order to decide whether this visitor was dishonest by the standards of ordinary people, it would be necessary to establish his own actual state of knowledge of how public transport works. Because he genuinely believes that public transport is free, there is nothing objectively dishonest about his not paying on the bus. The same would be true of a child who did not know the rules, or of a person who had innocently misread the bus pass sent to him and did not realise that it did not operate until after 10.00 in the morning. The answer to the court's question is that ‘dishonestly’, where it appears, is indeed intended to characterise what the defendant did, but in characterising it one must first ascertain his actual state of mind as to the facts in which he did it. It was not correct to postulate that the conventional objective test of dishonesty involves judging only the actions and not the state of knowledge or belief as to the facts in which they were performed. What is objectively judged is the standard of behaviour, given any known actual state of mind of the actor as to the facts.”
91. At para 62 Lord Hughes JSC said:
“Dishonesty is by no means confined to the criminal law. Civil actions may also frequently raise the question whether an action was honest or dishonest. The liability of an accessory to a breach of trust is, for example, not strict, as the liability of the trustee is, but (absent an exoneration clause) is fault-based. Negligence is not sufficient. Nothing less than dishonest assistance will suffice. Successive cases at the highest level have decided that the test of dishonesty is objective. After some hesitation in Twinsectra Ltd v Yardley [2002] 2 AC 164, the law is settled on the objective test set out by Lord Nicholls in Royal Brunei Airlines Sdn Bhd v Tan [1995] 2 AC 378: see Barlow Clowes International (In liquidation) Ltd v Eurotrust International Ltd [2006] 1 WLR 1476, Abou-Rahmah v Abacha [2007] Bus LR 220 and Starglade Properties Ltd v Nash [2011] Lloyd's Rep FC 102.”
92. After further analysis of the authorities, Lord Hughes JSC concluded at para 74:
“These several considerations provide convincing grounds for holding that the second leg of the test propounded in Ghosh [1982] QB 1053 does not correctly represent the law and that directions based upon it ought no longer to be given. The test of dishonesty is as set out by Lord Nicholls in Royal Brunei Airlines Sdn Bhd v Tan and by Lord Hoffmann in Barlow Clowes: see para 62 above. When dishonesty is in question the fact-finding tribunal must first ascertain (subjectively) the actual state of the individual's knowledge or belief as to the facts. The reasonableness or otherwise of his belief is a matter of evidence (often in practice determinative) going to whether he held the belief, but it is not an additional requirement that his belief must be reasonable; the question is whether it is genuinely held. When once his actual state of mind as to knowledge or belief as to facts is established, the question whether his conduct was honest or dishonest is to be determined by the fact-finder by applying the (objective) standards of ordinary decent people. There is no requirement that the defendant must appreciate that what he has done is, by those standards, dishonest.”
93. Let me stand back from the kaleidoscope of the authorities and consider what the law now is. Honesty is a basic moral quality which is expected of all members of society. It involves being truthful about important matters and respecting the property rights of others. Telling lies about things that matter or committing fraud or stealing are generally regarded as dishonest conduct. These observations are self-evident and they fit with the authorities cited above. The legal concept of dishonesty is grounded upon the shared values of our multicultural society. Because dishonesty is grounded upon basic shared values, there is no undue difficulty in identifying what is or is not dishonest.
94. The general law imposes criminal and/or civil liability for many, but not all, dishonest acts or omissions. As explained most recently in the Ivey case [2017] 3 WLR 1212, the test for dishonesty is objective. Nevertheless, the defendant's state of mind as well as their conduct are relevant to determining whether they have acted dishonestly.' [bold added]
Turning to 'integrity', Jackson LJ in Wingate said, at paragraphs 95 to 106:
'95. Let me now turn to integrity. As a matter of common parlance and as a matter of law, integrity is a broader concept than honesty. In this regard, I agree with the observations of the Divisional Court in the Williams case [2017] EWHC 1478 (Admin) and I disagree with the observations of Mostyn J in the Malins case [2017] 4 WLR 85.
96. Integrity is a more nebulous concept than honesty. Hence it is less easy to define, as a number of judges have noted.
97. In professional codes of conduct, the term “integrity” is a useful shorthand to express the higher standards which society expects from professional persons and which the professions expect from their own members. See the judgment of Sir Brian Leveson P in the Williams case at para 130. The underlying rationale is that the professions have a privileged and trusted role in society. In return they are required to live up to their own professional standards.
98. I agree with Davis LJ in the Chan case [2015] EWHC 2659 (Admin) that it is not possible to formulate an all-purpose, comprehensive definition of integrity. On the other hand, it is a counsel of despair to say: “Well you can always recognise it, but you can never describe it.”
99. The broad contours of what integrity means, at least in the context of professional conduct, are now becoming clearer. The observations of the Financial Services and Markets Tribunal in the Hoodless case [2003] UKFTT 7 have met with general approbation.
100. Integrity connotes adherence to the ethical standards of one's own profession. That involves more than mere honesty. To take one example, a solicitor conducting negotiations or a barrister making submissions to a judge or arbitrator will take particular care not to mislead. Such a professional person is expected to be even more scrupulous about accuracy than a member of the general public in daily discourse.
101. The duty to act with integrity applies not only to what professional persons say, but also to what they do. It is possible to give many illustrations of what constitutes acting without integrity. For example, in the case of solicitors:
(i) A sole practice giving the appearance of being a partnership and deliberately flouting the conduct rules: the Emeana case [2014] ACD 14.
(ii) Recklessly, but not dishonestly, allowing a court to be misled: the Brett case [2015] PNLR 2.
(iii) Subordinating the interests of the clients to the solicitors’ own financial interests: the Chan case [2015] EWHC 2659 (Admin).
(iv) Making improper payments out of the client account: the Scott case [2016] EWHC 1256 (Admin).
(v) Allowing the firm to become involved in conveyancing transactions which bear the hallmarks of mortgage fraud (the Newell-Austin case [2017] Med LR 194.
(vi) Making false representations on behalf of the client: the Williams case [2017] EWHC 1478 (Admin).
102. Obviously, neither courts nor professional tribunals must set unrealistically high standards, as was observed during argument. The duty of integrity does not require professional people to be paragons of virtue. In every instance, professional integrity is linked to the manner in which that particular profession professes to serve the public. Having accepted that principle, it is not necessary for this court to reach a view on whether the Howd case [2017] 4 WLR 54 was correctly decided.
103. A jury in a criminal trial is drawn from the wider community and is well able to identify what constitutes dishonesty. A professional disciplinary tribunal has specialist knowledge of the profession to which the respondent belongs and of the ethical standards of that profession. Accordingly such a body is well placed to identify want of integrity. The decisions of such a body must be respected, unless it has erred in law.
104. Let me now turn from principle 2 in the SRA's code to principle 6. A solicitor breaches principle 6 if he behaves in a way that undermines the trust which the public places in himself/herself and in the provision of legal services.
105. Principle 6 is aimed at a different target from that of principle 2. Principle 6 is directed to preserving the reputation of, and public confidence in, the legal profession. It is possible to think of many forms of conduct which would undermine public confidence in the legal profession. Manifest incompetence is one example. A solicitor acting carelessly, but with integrity, will breach principle 6 if his careless conduct goes beyond mere professional negligence and constitutes “manifest incompetence”: see Iqbal v Solicitors Regulation Authority [2012] EWHC 3251 (Admin) and Solicitors Regulation Authority v Libby [2017] ACD 81.
106. In applying principle 6 it is important not to characterise run of the mill professional negligence as manifest incompetence. All professional people are human and will from time to time make slips which a court would characterise as negligent. Fortunately, no loss results from most such slips. But acts of manifest incompetence engaging the principles of professional conduct are of a different order.' [bold added]