The final report of the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions should have been seen as the propaganda it is. It criticised the professions, particularly the law, for limiting access from the poorer sections of society, but nowhere in this 167-page document is there any mention of the abolition of local authority grants and the introduction of tuition fees, still less any recognition of the discouraging effect they have on the ambitions of the less-well-off youngster.

Many lawyers of my generation came from poorer backgrounds, but we were able to get local authority grants, so we did not face mind-boggling debts when we were admitted. Well-off parents can afford to help and so they do. The lack of financial help for the less well-off has simply cleared them from the field of competition. Not surprisingly fewer of them are getting in.

Mediators are taught how effective it is to name a tactic. The government’s tactic in promoting this report is clearly to demonise the professions further without addressing any inconvenient evidence. Merely reporting this propaganda without asking any questions serves that dishonest purpose.

Peter Ryder, Middlewich, Cheshire