Scotland's top advocate has accused politicians of undermining the independence of his profession.

Roy Martin, QC, the dean of the Faculty of Advocates, warned of a creeping threat to lawyer's freedoms - just as they are needed most.

Mr Martin, in a hard-hitting message to Scotland's latest crop of young lawyers, fired a broadside against new regulation and legal aid funding problems eroding their time-honoured and cherished independence from the state.

He told an admission ceremony for newly-qualified solicitors at Edinburgh's Parliament House: "There is a danger that interests which do not properly recognise the importance in a civilised society of an independent legal profession are taking steps which have already undermined, and will continue to undermine, that independence. In a society where the individual citizen is increasingly subject to regulation and control by the state, what the lawyer does is unique because it is he or she who has the responsibility of standing between the citizen and the state in all its guises - and it is essential that the lawyer can do so, and be seen to do so, independently."

Mr Martin's speech, said to be the most controversial delivered at the event in a generation, summed up simmering discontent on what some lawyers see as interference from Holyrood, Westminster, and even Brussels.

The dean has already joined with other senior law figures in warning of what they see as a threat to the independence of the justiciary and attacking the executive's Scottish Legal Complaints Commission which, widely welcomed by lay people, will effectively end centuries of self-regulation.

However, a spokesman for the Scottish Executive last night dismissed any suggestion recent reforms would do anything to take away lawyers' freedoms.

He said: "The last four years have been a time of unprecedented reform in the justice system.

"New laws and procedures have laid the platform for a more efficient, more effective justice system that treats victims, witnesses and consumers with increasing care and respect."