There is no alternative to the tough decisions the government is having to make around legal aid, Ben Gummer MP said, speaking at a fringe event at Conservative conference, run by the Law Society and Justice for All.
Gummer, who sits on the public bill committee for the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, suggested that if Labour was in power today, and sitting on the panel, the party would be saying "exactly the same thing".
He highlighted the need to cut legal aid now, rather than face a 30 to 40 per cent cut in the legal aid budget down the line.
Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, representing the Law Society, speaking about the cuts to legal aid in cases of domestic violence, said it seemed an "obvious statement" that people are going to die without the mediatory effect of legal representatives on both sides.
Refuting the suggestion that people will die due to the cuts, Gummer said it was "unhelpful" to take the debate into this area.
Offered the right to reply by the chair, Paul Waugh, on this issue, Scott-Moncrieff denied that she was scaremongering and rebutted claims by Gummer that the definition of domestic violence had been widely extended.
Roger Harding, head of policy at Shelter, a member of the Justice for all Coalition, put forward the case that it is not only vulnerable people who will suffer in the wake of the government's cuts to legal aid, but the taxpayer as well.
He stressed how legal aid can actually save money by being preventative, keeping people out of the court system and a cycle of crime.
Harding raised the inclusion of Shelter, mentioned in the white paper around the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, as an alternative advice provider following the changes to legal aid.
With legal aid the biggest single source of statutory funding for Shelter, following the cuts, Harding said that the advice would no longer be available. In the current economic context, he said, this is a time when legal aid "is really needed".
Looking ahead to the planned changes to benefit systems, particularly universal credit, which is being brought in in 2013, Harding raised concerns that due to the pooling of data, some people will slip through the net, and require advice on how to ensure they receive the benefits they are entitled to.
"It is vital clients have access to legal aid, so that they are not a victim of bureaucratic mistakes," he said.