Some facts about legal aid:

• £1.7B is peanuts in the scheme of things, especially when considering what legal aid is for
• the overwhelming majority of legal aid lawyers earn very little. Those few who command high fees do so by undertaking the most challenging cases & .. https://twitter.com/toryboypierce/status/1343545466772983808

.. could earn vastly more if they worked for private clients
• the Legal Aid Agency is a govt. body. Its inefficiency is entirely deliberate. In the same way that applicants for UC must overcome pointless & strict hurdles to obtain money they are entitled to, legal aid ..

.. lawyers must cope with ever more complicated forms & significant delays in receiving payment.
• the erosion of legal aid goes back to the early 90s & has been continuous under govts. of both colours ever since
• [warning - Marxist theory coming] the real target of ..

.. legal aid cuts is not the ‘fat cat’ lawyers but the usually lower class people they represent.
• Labour also denigrated legal aid lawyers as ‘fat cats’ - both Lord Irvine & Lord Falconer did so. Falconer has since apologised. I do not forgive him.
• I got out of ..

.. legal aid in about 1995 when I saw the writing on the wall. Numerous law firms have followed suit leading to ‘advice deserts’ - whole areas of the country in which free or affordable advice is not available.
• further Marxist theory - the state’s ideal would be publicly ..

.. funded & controlled advice centres & public defenders for crime, rather than fiercely independent solicitors &, especially, barristers.

Pierce is just the latest in a long line of rattlesnakes playing the fat cat card to attack both the independent bar & the working class.