You ‘fat-cat’ solicitors are in reality doing more for less.

Did you know that selling a grey squirrel is now against the law? There is gallows (sic) humour in the fact that New Labour has created 3,600 new criminal offences since it came to power 11 years ago.

We choked over this statistic all over again while digesting Jack Straw’s latest broadside on the growing legal aid bill. The truth, of course, is that the budget has actually declined in real terms since 1997. At the same time, the number of crimes for which offenders are brought to justice has increased, from 1 million to 1.25 million, as an angry Law Society pointed out. So you ‘fat-cat’ solicitors are in reality doing more for less, which we also know.

They used to say that New Labour had abandoned economic interventionism in favour of social authoritarianism, though that argument hardly holds water now given its rediscovered enthusiasm for nationalisation. Ideological nitpicking aside, however, it is reasonable to look at the sums involved and ponder government priorities.

Let’s pluck another statistic out of the air. We heard last month that the new ID card scheme, the joker in the ‘surveillance society’ deck, will cost £34bn at latest estimates – enough to fund legal aid at current rates for 15 years. And, what’s more, we don’t want it, or need it. Oh, and it won’t work.

There is no wonder legal aid solicitors are occasionally prone to despair.