Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

The noble Lord has just made the case for the Government rather succinctly. That is the argument; what I am saying is that if you put the qualifying phrase, "““within the resources made available””," into Clause 1, then everything is subservient to it. At the moment, the legal aid cost rises and falls—it usually rises but occasionally falls—according to the demands of the citizen upon it within the scope of legal aid availability. As I say, with this phrase in it the Government could say at the start of the year, ““We are not paying out more than blank pounds for legal aid””, and that would be that.