Access to justice was part of Clement Attlee's vision for a welfare state involving free advice at the point of delivery, the Lord Chancellor told Labour Party faithful last week as he pledged to improve the legal aid system.

Speaking at a fringe session - organised by the Law Society and the Citizens Advice Bureaux - at the Bournemouth party conference, Lord Falconer said the public caricature of lawyers was ill founded.

It did not take into account 'those many lawyers engaged in a constant fight against costs for people who would otherwise have no advice'.

He said one of his tasks was to change this.

Lord Falconer said: 'Since 1997, we've been trying to make access to justice a reality.' He acknowledged that government 'has not got there yet', and that there were issues about the 'bureaucracy' of legal aid delivery.

But Lord Falconer asked lawyers not to break with the government, saying he was prepared to fight for access to justice to be put on the same level of Whitehall importance as health or education.

Janet Paraskeva, the Law Society's chief executive, told the meeting: 'The government has made significant differences on health and education.

We hope to help it make legal aid work as well.'

The Law Centres Federation (LCF) also waded into the row over publicly funded legal services, spearheaded by the Citizens Advice Bureau last week, at the same time Prime Minister Tony Blair was complaining about the 'legal aid gravy train' in his keynote speech.

Speaking at another conference fringe meeting, LCF chief executive Steve Hynes argued that with private practices dropping out of legal aid, the fight against social exclusion had been dealt a massive blow.

'There is a need for the national network of law centres that the LCF has always argued for,' he said.

'But more importantly for the people and communities we serve there has to be access to the range of legal services we argue for.

Not to [provide those services] will represent a failure of government and a failure to uphold the values of society that every free and just society should enjoy.'

Jeremy Fleming and Paula Rohan