We have, within the last week, been consulted by a client who was persuaded as a result of a cold call to make a will incorporating trusts to protect the value of half the matrimonial home from the risk of care home charges.

The cost of this will (which ran to two pages, though we would see no need for anything longer in such circumstances), together with a lasting power of attorney prepared on an improper basis (the will preparer herself signed Part 2, notwithstanding the fact that she had never met or spoken to our clients) was £1,995 including VAT.

Our clients paid this up front, having been persuaded that in doing so they would be protecting their children.

The last government was very keen to remove consumer protection and to allow all and sundry to provide legal services; for some peculiar reason, the public has a perception that solicitors always charge more than unlicensed operatives.

We well remember being contacted by a conveyancer, at the time when the licensed conveyancers scheme was being set up, to ask if he could come under our umbrella.

We refused.

He revealed to us then that he was able to charge roughly twice as much for a conveyance as we did, since all his clients were convinced solicitors charged at least twice what he did. If only.

I have the impression that the last government had something of a ‘down’ on solicitors since, even in the days of apparent plenty, legal aid charges were virtually frozen at ridiculous levels.

But perhaps they had worked out that the only effective opposition to the executive were the courts – and cases of any complexity need the assistance of solicitors to bring them to court.

It has long been known that all MPs who were formerly solicitors forget about the problems of provincial private practice within a year or so of reaching the Palace of Westminster.

R M Napier, Albinson Napier & Co, Warrington