Keith Mitchell, former Conservative leader of Oxfordshire County Council: Waste

At £2 billion per annum it’s unaffordable and represents a higher spend per capita than any other country.

There is a deep dichotomy in the British psyche.

We welcome strangers and are generous to charities, but this has led to a view abroad that we are an “easy touch”, offering generous benefits to anyone who reaches these shores.

While Europe’s open door policy and our failure to control immigration effectively have placed huge pressure on an economy the last Labour government nearly bankrupted us. We have become quick to demand “our rights” but slower to recognise our responsibilities. While we all hate paying taxes, there is a sad and growing culture of envy that believes “the wealthy” should pay more, usually meaning “anyone earning more than me”. This is reflected in the legal aid system and I blame lawyers for much of it.

They have encouraged a culture that believes every problem has a solution in legislation and placed an emphasis on human rights that frequently makes a nonsense of common sense and aids one group to the disadvantage of another.

Lawyers claim legal aid gives access to the law for all. This is nonsense. There are two groups who are easily able to go to court over a dispute.

They are the very wealthy and the relatively poor. Sitting in between is a large group of the squeezed middle who are not wealthy enough to pay huge legal fees but not poor enough for legal aid.

The ultimate argument for better control on legal aid has to be Abu Hamza who cost this country £1m in his efforts to avoid rightful extradition.

Of course, there should be some legal aid but, like so much of our public spending, it has spiralled out of control and beyond what we can afford.

Jan Matthews, managing director of Reeds Solicitors in Oxford: Vital

Reeds Solicitors is the largest criminal legal aid law firm in Oxfordshire, dealing with over 4,000 cases a year.

A large number of our clients have never been in trouble before. Many are innocent.

This means that while they are telling the truth, no one believes them – not the police, not the prosecution and perhaps not even their friends and family. It must be a frightening experience.

There are plenty of reasons to want a strong criminal justice system, but the reason that might make you stop and think is that some day it might happen to you.

If it does then wouldn’t you want to know that the person standing between you and prison is properly trained and part of an organisation that has the resources to take on the system?

After all, it is your liberty that will be at stake, and the Government is willing to spend vast amounts of money investigating and prosecuting you.

You might think that you have the right to a solicitor who has access to the same resources, and in fact you do. That much is guaranteed by article six of the European Convention on Human Rights. The proposed cuts mean that the Government will pay less for criminal cases than they paid in 1978.

This is not on the basis of figures adjusted for inflation, but on actual figures.

Expenditure on legal aid has been cut whether the economy has been flourishing or in recession.

There comes a point when what the government wants to pay simply isn’t enough to keep it going.

The problem is that the Government has made no effort to find out where that point is. They are simply picking an amount to cut out of thin air and hoping that it doesn’t just fall apart.

If it does then it will be the innocent poor who suffer.