The justice secretary has seen the future – with a little help from Specsavers – but will it work?

It would have been better had Mr Straw’s remarks not been predicated on a patently false premise: that increases in the £2bn legal aid budget are ‘unsustainable’. It is a question of policy and it always was. Scrap Trident and that’s the next decade taken care of, to take a crude example.­

If England and Wales are spending such a comparatively disproportionate amount on legal aid, Mr Straw should explain in forensic detail why this is inappropriate. Especially when one considers that the UK is a low-wage economy, a fact conveniently forgotten in the era of cheap credit.

Still, we are where we are, and the Gazette urges you to read the justice secretary’s speech. Not only because he does not often opine on the future of the legal services ‘industry’ (his word), but also because his crystal-ball gazing is likely to prove prescient, like it or not.

The future of legal aid provision as evinced by Mr Straw is one of breakneck consolidation, commoditisation and (let’s not beat about the bush) de-skilling. It is a vision of legal aid factories run by often remote stakeholders, employing as few solicitors as possible.

‘No firm, large or small, will be able to stand still in the face of the innovation which new business models will bring,’ Mr Straw warns. And on this at least, he is right.