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My comparison of demands & offer is all, word for word, on the CBA website. The further analysis is all my own work.

In March 2009 Jack Straw, then Lord Chancellor in the last Labour government, gave a speech at the LSE entitled ‘Constitutional Continuity’. One of the points he made was that there were too many barristers engaged in legal aid work.
Ken Clarke (then Secretary of State for Justice) repeated the message (Legal Futures, 11 October 2011) and Peter Lodder QC, then Chair of the Bar Council, reported, after a meeting at the MoJ in October 2011, that “Although Ken Clarke praised the efforts which the Bar has made to improve access to the profession, he expressed the view that too many are trying to practise at the self-employed Bar.”
In a report in The Law Society Gazette (30 September 2013), Dominic Grieve (then Secretary of State for Justice) returned to the subject; ‘Legal aid cuts hurt but the Bar is just too big’.
The 2014 Jeffrey Review also, independently, said the same thing. “The only conclusion one can reach is that there are many more advocates than there is work for them to do”.

Nothing has changed. Perhaps it's time something, other than chipping a few £ out of a reluctant and obdurate MoJ, did change.