The last week has doubtless been a tiring one for legal aid minister Jonathan Djanogly (pictured), as he prepares to wade his way through the hefty 5,000 responses the Ministry of Justice received to its legal aid consultation.

This must surely be the only explanation for the minister’s two recent parliamentary blunders. The first came in the House of Commons last week, when Djanogly was asked what progress had been made on recouping the whopping £1.3bn in court fines that remains uncollected.

Djanogly’s response was impressively defiant and detailed, but unfortunately it was all about legal aid, and nothing to do with unpaid court fines. This prompted shouts from the chamber and a call for order before the Speaker cuttingly alerted Djanogly to his error: ‘The minister delivered his answer with admirable force and self-confidence, but I think it suffered from being the wrong answer,’ he sniped.

The next day, Djanogly found himself before the House of Commons’ Justice Committee, where he faced some pretty feeble questioning from MPs.

His performance was faltering and characterised by an unwillingness to deal with any specifics. But there was one accidental moment of candour. Labour MP for Islwyn, Chris Evans, asked if Djanogly agreed with the Legal Action Group’s assertion that the cuts would mean legal aid ceased to be a viable national service. ‘Absolutely’, was the minister’s confident reply. Again, Djanogly did not register his error, and it was left to the committee chair, Sir Alan Beith, to suggest that the minister’s answer ought to have been ‘absolutely not’.

Obiter hopes the legal aid minister will get his act together in time to prepare an error-free response to his consultation; otherwise, as Beith pointed out, he could end up being judicially reviewed by people funded by legal aid.