SPG meeting brings report row to boil

A SIMMERING row between senior figures in the Law Society Sole Practitioner's Group looks set to boil over this week when the group holds its annual meeting.

The meeting - attended by the society's presidential candidates - will be fired up by claims that chair Arnold Rosen is being censored by his own ruling committee.

Rosen has been forced to distribute his own report as chair after the committee refused, on the grounds that the document contained unfair and exaggerated criticism of its members.

Rosen claims the report was "suppressed" because he used it to promote greater democracy in the group. It included a plea to sole practitioners to attend the meetings and questions the candidates about their policies.

Rosen says he was only able to get a copy to half those able to attend. "This is folly," he says. "It is the one time sole practitioners can get up and question the candidates, and because of this suppression some of them still do not know that the candidates will be there."

The chair first tried to circulate the report earlier this year. The committee refused and told him to make alterations. Even after cutting the text, they claimed it was still offensive.

Rosen claims he has fallen foul of a small group on the committee who have made him the victim of "secret and obsessive disloyalty".

John Lymbury, the SPG's press officer, says the committee still finds Rosen's report

unacceptable.