The Minister of Justice has lots of low-hanging fruit in his sector, if he chooses to hunt for chances to end pointless state spending. Justice Clifford has just polished for him a small but juicy plum – deciding that prisoners are entitled to legal aid for their parole hearings.

In 2007, in its dying days, Labour changed the Parole Act to say that parole was a privilege, not a right. The change, to section 28 reads:

" In deciding whether or not to release an offender on parole, the Board must bear in mind that the offender has no entitlement to be released on parole and, in particular, that neither the offender's eligibility for release on parole nor anything else in this Act or any other enactment confers such an entitlement.”

I regarded that as a small personal victory, having pushed fruitlessly for such a statement as an MP, and then having ensured that it was one of Sensible Sentencing's objectives.

But the justice insiders still had their hands on the pen, and they made sure the change was cosmetic only. They changed nothing else in the Act to give that declaration meaning. It is therefore an orphan curiousity in the Act, a cynical response to growing public awareness of the hypocrisy in justice insider rhetoric about parole.

There is no evidence that parole achieves any of its claimed objectives, other than to maintain the deceit in our courts, as judges hand down sentences the justice anointed know will mean little. The real sentence is not decided in open court. It is decided by the well meaning wallies on Parole Board panels.

Now the Hon Simon Power has an opportunity to give the provision meaning, and nip a new legal industry in the bud, by explicitly banning legal aid for lawyers instructed by criminals to get their right to release (oops – privilege).

Justice Clifford cited the new right to legal aid for lawyers representing victims as support for the view that criminals should also get it.

There is a clear distinction. The victims are usually there trying to ensure that the court's decision is upheld and that justice gained is not denied by the administrative granting of privilege to overturn court ordered sentence. They face the weight of the justice anointeds' delight in showing their "compassion", knowing the price will rarely visit them in their leafy suburbs and secure apartment blocks.

The criminal need only show he's not unmistakeably dangerous to get the privilege. The system starts on his side because letting him out will free up space. Hard to see that justice demands that the rest of us pay for lawyers to argue for a privilege  under a system pre-loaded to give it out.

Anxiety about inequality is a reason to support lawyer involvement in cases. But not necessarily routinely, and certainly not on the state payroll. If that is your concern there are myriad more deserving areas for lawyer involvement. For example, people fighting relegation on hospital waiting lists are far more likely to have compelling cases and clean hands. But even there I suspect the net costs/benefit from lawyerising the process would be negative. There is no case at all for requiring the state to pay.

So roll back smartly this week's extension of legal aid for prisoners.