As the scale of the spending cuts comes into focus with the penetrating report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, there should be concerns about the amount to be cut from legal aid in criminal cases and savings made in the courts, particularly on jury trials.

Despite the absence of a government spending review, it is clear that there are going to be huge cuts in the money available to make certain that justice is done. Already the government has announced a 13.4% cut in fixed-fee rates from criminal defences, a point keenly felt by lawyers who know about the £130m spent by Jack Straw's Justice Department on refurbishment and the £3m bill for furniture and artwork.

The Financial Times suggests that Labour and the Conservatives have resolved to use jury trial far less and rely on magistrates to make use of powers that allow them to hear so-called "triable either way cases". This would mean that magistrate would deal with a larger number of cases that otherwise might be referred up to jury trials in the crown court. Straw says that up to a third of the 60,000 "either way" cases heard by the court in 2007 could have been dealt with by magistrates. The Tories probably have about the same number in mind.

One way or another, trial by jury is going to suffer because of financial expediency but also, I suspect, because of the modern belief, so common in the government – and now, it seems, in the Conservative party – that a charge is an indicator of guilt. Yet there is no question that justice is better served by a jury trial, which has been a defining part of English culture and democracy since the civil war.

The load on magistrates will be greatly increased by this policy, especially as courts are already being closed at an alarming rate. The Ministry of Justice has announced the closure of 20 magistrates' courts, which clearly puts paid to the idea of justice being seen to be done locally. According to the FT, the number of magistrates' courts had been halved since 1979.

The more important part of this story is the attack on the £2.1m legal aid budget, which means the hourly rate for representation in criminal cases is about to fall dramatically. The paper quotes figures which show a fall from £50-£35 to about £27-35 per hour. The effect of this will be to reduce the number of lawyers who are prepared to put up with the hours and all night duties in often quite trying conditions, not least of which is the new virtual court system that does not allow the lawyer to appear with their client in the same room as magistrates.

The legal aid budget will be cut and the quality of justice on offer in Britain will be diminished, because while the police are regarded as a frontline service, justice is not.

This is another part of Labour's wonderful legacy to Britain. I don't think the crisis that will occur in the next couple of years can be simply blamed on current economic pressures. The waste in public spending over the last 13 years has been atrocious. When Alan Johnson defended CCTV at a Labour event, I noticed that there was no mention of the £500m spent on CCTV between 1996 and 2006, or the fact, now established in academic surveys, official figures and the statements of senior Metropolitan police officers that CCTV has marginal impact on crime, and is most effective in car parks.

Two years ago Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville, the head of the Met's Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido), said that criminals were not afraid of cameras. He told a conference that the systems were an "utter fiasco", with only 3% of robberies being solved by CCTV.

Of course Labour has been hypnotised by the power of surveillance systems. But now we are living in the real world, it must be clear that most of that £600m would have been much better spent on supporting magistrates courts, legal representation and rehabilitation schemes.