I do agree with you. The Thomas commission recommended the devolution of justice. I've made many comments in the past about the failures over many decades of the approach to legal aid and its importance in the empowerment of people. And, of course, the recent World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, I think, on average, put the United Kingdom now at fifteenth in the world, but when it came to access to and the affordability of civil justice, the United Kingdom was ranked eighty-ninth out of 140 countries, putting us behind the Russian Federation, Romania, Belarus, El Salvador, Paraguay, Botswana, Côte d'Ivoire and many other countries. That is a mark of shame that the Government has. 

What I find very, very difficult, of course, is that we now have an Under-Secretary for justice, Lord Bellamy, who has been very respectful and has been very engaging—he was visiting here yesterday; he gave evidence to your committee—but then we also have a Lord Chancellor who has totally trashed big chunks of and key elements to the Bellamy report on the review of legal aid, to such an extent—. I'll just quote this comment from the Law Society in respect of the decision just the other day by Dominic Raab. It says:

'Numbers of duty solicitors and criminal legal aid firms continue to fall at an alarming rate—with several police station schemes on the verge of collapse.'

We know that in our Valleys, our advice deserts.

'Access to justice—including the fundamental right to representation at the police station—is in serious peril and the government is ignoring the threat.'

It says the reckless decision is

'likely to prove to be a fatal blow to a criminal justice system that used to be the envy of the world.'

I very much endorse that particular analysis. The £11 million that we've put into our single advice fund is a vital cog in at least giving some representation to the people who most need that access, but it is not a substitute for a properly funded access-to-justice system.