LAWYERS should be able to earn no more than £100,000 a year in Legal Aid payments and any further work they do for clients who qualify for Legal Aid should be done for free.

That is the view of York MP Hugh Bayley who proposed the measures in a debate in the House of Commons.

Mr Bayley said it was perverse that some lawyers were earning up to £1 million from the public purse and were being paid four times more than the top judges and doctors in the country.

He said capping Legal Aid payments to lawyers at £100,000 would also lead to a fairer distribution of Legal Aid work. He said: "If the small number of Legal Aid lawyers earning hundreds of thousands of pounds would not wish to carry out that work if their maximum remuneration was £100,000 or less, plenty of other Legal Aid lawyers would be prepared to do it.

"I cannot accept that a public service should pay Rolls Royce prices."

Mr Bayley said solicitors in York earned a fraction of the £100,000 cap he was proposing and, in general, lawyers everywhere "would be falling over themselves" if they could earn that much.

Mr Bayley also drew attention to a National Audit Office report, which found that family law cases cost less than half as much in Legal Aid on average if they go to mediation - £752 compared with £1,682 - but that a third of Legal Aid clients were not told about mediation.

The MP argued Legal Aid costs would be reduced - and some cases would not go to court at all - if the budget was controlled by people closer to the clients.

The poor deal solicitors in the York area get with regard to travel expenses was also discussed.

Mr Bayley said lawyers should be able to claim for travel.

This would redress the imbalance that means if a York solicitor is representing a client on remand in Hull Prison, they get paid the same as a Hull solicitor representing a client in the same prison - despite the York solicitor having to drive 45 miles.