Anteater, not all of that will go to the solicitor personally a good chunk will go to meet office costs and bump up the firm's profits, not the individual's salary. What you as the client are paying for is that person's time, ie. their expertise and experience. But not all the work that a solicitor or other professional does is billable hours I spend quite a lot of time doing eg. admin and research work that I know I won't be able to bill the client for (I'm not a solicitor, but it's the same principle).
And work that is funded by Legal Aid works according to slightly different rules -- not sure how Legal Aid solicitors charge, but there are complicated and somewhat arbitrary caps on expenditure, which don't always bear very direct relation to the amount of work needing to be carried out. So not all solicitors or professionals whose work is charged out at these sort of hourly sums will actually be coining it in themselves.
Helenm -- yes, if work is carried out by an assistant, then that part of the work should be charged at a lower rate.