Campaigners have attacked the bill, which introduces measures such as means testing for legal aid, claiming it will put a price on justice.

Instead the Lords voted for means testing to come in after two year, despite ministers warning that this could cost £1.6bn over five years.

We already have a perfectly good system for means testing pensioners: taxation.

How much money would actually be saved by means testing universal benefits for pensioners?

Ministers said the alternative was to introduce a complex and expensive system of means testing for all household incomes which would undermine the whole system.

"We will see means testing before most of the boomers retire," he said.

Why not simply pay benefits without means testing to everybody entitled to them and then tax the wealthy who can easily afford it, to pay for them?

A. I'm violently opposed to means testing Social Security.

There is also a different system of charging for residential nursing care, with less dependence on means testing in Wales than in England.

October 2006 saw the introduction of means testing as part of the determination of legal aid in the Magistrates Court.