The Ministry of Justice has enraged the profession after claiming that illegal behaviour on its part was simply a technicality.

The MoJ is trying to cut legal aid spending by £220m a year. The profession has reacted angrily, with strikes and judicial challenges. The most recent was before Mr Justice Burnett, who held last week that the MoJ had refused to allow parties to the consultation process to comment on reports prepared by KPMG and Otterburn. He found that this was "so unfair as to amount to illegality". Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan said that he knew the government was incompetent but that this "takes the biscuit".

A politician taking the bisuit yesterday.

But Chris Grayling checked his bovvered bag and found it empty. The MoJ's press office said that another challenge to the cuts had already failed, and tweeted that this most recent judgment "raises some technical issues on consultation process which we're considering". Cue fury from pretty much everyone, with a plethora of comments pointing out that "illegal" isn't a "technical issue".

Bill Waddington, Chairman of the Criminal Law Solicitors' Association, said that this was a "damning indictment" of Grayling.