The UK's budget for legal aid has been slashed dramatically in recent years under the Conservative government under the guise of austerity.

This is well documented in the (very readable) book "The Secret Barrister". https://thesecretbarrister.com/

The author claims that the cuts are not even cost-effective, often leading to more spending by government to deal with the consequences.

I will second the book. The author also has a presence on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BarristerSecret

How do you get to be a lawyer in the US if you aren't competent?

Like all professions there are levels of ability and competence. Like all professions those levels are very often but not always reflected in pay scale (including levels of experience). Even with that said I am sure many public defenders are excellent attorneys trying to help less fortunate people, they often have to contend with 80+ cases every week. There is no way an attorney can be expected to provide excellent representation when dealing with that many cases, its just not possible.

Public defenders also get far less resources than prosecutors.

They’re quite prestigious positions to get, somewhat ironically. My guess is that cynicism creeps in over time too, you see similar patterns over and over, and combined with the high caseload probably does lead to over reliance on instinct.

Well, it isn't always that they aren't competent. Put that same lawyer in a position where they are paid, and I'm guessing things would improve.

But what actually happens is that the system makes them incompetent simply being in the job. For example, the caseload is too high, which means that they cannot spend the time a paid lawyer would spend on it. Folks also get little choice in which of these cases they take and which they do not. On top of all of this, they are working in a system stacked against them and they usually aren't getting paid much.

Passing the bar implies some level of technical competence. It doesn't say much about the service delivered to indigent defendants. I suspect it is a mix of overworked, burned out, jaded, pressure to take a plea deal to reduce load, etc.

It’s a big field, I’m a lawyer and I know my one niche really well. I’m competent in that niche. Throw something at me like a criminal case and I’m worse than incompetent because I might let my arrogance eclipse my incompetence. It doesn’t help that the ethical rules defer to the lawyer, essentially, to decide if they are competent or willing to put in the effort to become competent for a given matter. Factoid: the only regulated legal practice in the US is patent matters. You have to be a patent lawyer to represent clients in patent matters. I guess the ethicists decided you can’t bluff your way through engineering, lol.

Doesn't matter much if the lawyer only has 10-15min allocated for your case.