Justice secretary Kenneth Clarke opined this week that he did not know ‘why’ legal aid was so expensive. Considering ‘if’ it is expensive would be a more pertinent point.

By most measures in a western economy the healthy balance between private and public is about 60:40 - a ratio that is sustainable and arguably desirable.

Yet the £19bn legal economy is radically skewed towards the private. In round terms, legal aid, the largest line item in that spend, is just 10% of that figure. The £29m spent on legal fees through the government’s central panel, and the £106m spent by local authorities, pushes the figure to the heady heights of just over 11% of the legal economy.

That reaches maybe 14-15% when you include the 2,000 lawyers working across the Government Legal Service. The message from this is clear - the public element of the legal economy is, in military parlance, already ‘running hot’. In common with areas such as higher education, individuals are already doing more with less, and, in many instances, clearly pricing what they do below the market rate for their individual or corporate services.

This thought does not seem to have crossed Mr Clarke’s mind.