What will Britain's spending review mean for asylum seekers and refugees?

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Source: Refugee Council

By Philippa, in the Communications team

The Chancellor took to the podium on Wednesday to reveal the long awaited Comprehensive Spending Review. The headlines in yesterday's newspapers and websites told us all about the rising pension age, cuts in disability benefits, increasing rail fares… But what does this mean for asylum seekers and refugees?
There was very little mention of asylum in the spending review, and the finer details of how the cuts will affect our clients will no doubt be revealed in coming weeks and months. But what was clear yesterday is that the most vulnerable in our society are going to suffer the most. So here is our own attempt at breaking down how our clients will be affected.

1. UKBA spending will be cut by £500 million by reducing service costs, but they will increase productivity by investing more in asylum casework and border control.

Sounds ominous, although we’re encouraged that they will pour more money into asylum casework. It is also crucial that policing our borders is not achieved at the expense of those seeking protection from persecution. Those in need of safety must have access to effective systems for considering their asylum claims at the point that they are entering the country. We are also already concerned about the speed of processing of some asylum claims, and if speed is to be a UKBA priority, they must also make sure that the process is better and fairer. We hope the Asylum Improvement Project which the government is already undertaking, will make sure of that.

2. Major reforms to the legal aid system involving taking tough choices about the types of case that should receive public funding, focusing support on those who need it most, and giving better value for the taxpayer.

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The human cost of European slashed refugee budgets and accelerated removals

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Source: Institute of Race Relations

Research from the Institute of Race Relations, including a review of 38 asylum and immigration related deaths in Europe over 18 months, shows the human cost of EU moves to slash budgets for refugee integration and accelerate the pace of removals - thereby undermining international conventions.In its report, Accelerated removals: a study of the human cost of EU deportation policies, 2009-2010, the IRR has documented the deaths of 28 men, 8 women and 2 boys, mostly asylum seekers, from January 2009 to 30 June 2010, in ten EU countries, Norway and Switzerland.

The vast majority of the deaths were either suicides linked to fear of deportation, or deaths that could have been avoided if asylum seekers were afforded proper medical care. Cuts to legal aid budgets and reduced access to justice, the targeting of specific nationals for charter-flight removals, overcrowding and appalling conditions in detention centres where hunger strikes are rife, are also placing individuals under abnormal levels of stress that are deleterious to health and undermine the will to live.

Unaccompanied children

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Video: withdrawal of British legal aid leaves refugees out in the cold

Source: VJ Movement

UK legal aid cuts - Fiat justitia ruat caelum

Image via WikipediaSource: Migrants Rights Network

Fiat justitia ruat caelum is a Latin legal phrase, meaning "May justice be done though the heavens fall."

By Jan Brulc

In the weeks before Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ) went into administration, Migrants' Rights Network sent a letter to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), highlighting some of the issues that cropped up in the process leading to the closure of RMJ, mostly related to the Legal Aid reform and the new system of payment of legal aid to organisations representing their clients.

It wasn’t till recently that we received a reply from Ministry of Justice. The letter we've sent to them was based on the template RMJ communications team circulated among their contacts. So, I would imagine that everyone else who took the time to write to Kenneth Clarke (we haven’t heard back from Mr Damian Green, and it seems that emails sent to the Government don't oblige them to write back), got a similar reply. And for that reason, it is worth dissecting a few statements from the letter.

Let's begin with this: “Though some initial disruption is unfortunately inevitable [with the transfer of work to new service providers], every effort will be made to minimize this.”

Two days ago a statement from the Legal Service Commission (LSC) confirmed that of the 12,500 live cases handed to them after the closure of RMJ, all had now either been marked as closed by the LSC staff or transferred to another provider. Sounds good, except that it's not. It was the death of Osman Rasul in the beginning of August, that made it abundantly clear that the transfer was not a smooth process. Far from it and the background on the case of Mr Rasul highlights this. Mr Rasul had needed to pursue his application to remain in the UK through an appeal. And while more than 1,300 asylum appeals were successful in the first quarter of 2010 alone, these are extremely costly and asylum seekers are regularly turned away by their legal representatives, because the work isn’t profitable.

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UK asylum seeker takes his own life after losing legal aid

Source: guardian.co.uk

By Owen Bowcott and Natalie Hanman

For two hours Osman Rasul perched on railings surrounding the seventh floor balcony of a Nottingham tower block. He blanked out police officers attempting to talk him down and at 7pm last Sunday, placing his hand on his heart, he looked up to the sky and leapt.

The 27-year-old Iraqi Kurd, classified by the local refugee centre as a "destitute asylum-seeker" and in a fraying relationship with the mother of his two children, had lost the legal aid he needed to pursue his application to remain in the UK. A trip south to confront Home Office immigration officers in Croydon saw him being turned away and told to find a solicitor.

Nine years of legal limbo, his friends suggested, had induced mounting desperation. Rasul anticipated deportation and all hopes of a life in Britain had evaporated by the time he jumped from Clifford Court tower. The waiting ambulance carried his body to the Queen's Medical Centre. At 7.21pm he was pronounced dead.

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Report: Present UK legal aid system acts to disincentivise quality

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• Justice at Risk: quality  and value for money in asylum legal aid: Interim report
• Undertaken by the Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees on behalf of Refugee and Migrant Justice, in partnership with Asylum Aid and Immigration Advisory Service.

While it is clear that quality work costs, this review has found evidence that poor quality work costs much more in the longer term both to the public purse and in human terms to individual asylum applicants. The LSC's Graduated Fee Scheme pays for legal aid work through a series of fixed fees. The evidence suggests that these fixed fees, combined with the low threshold level of quality at which legal aid providers can enter and operate in the UK market for asylum advice, may be designed to incentivise efficiency but in fact are likely to cost more in the long term.

The quality of legal representation is of paramount importance to asylum seekers whose cases routinely raise issues of life and liberty. This report, part of a research project looking at the costs of providing quality legal representation, outlines new findings that show the present legal aid system acts to disincentivise quality.

This report draws together original research, including interviews with stakeholders and refugees, a preliminary analysis of a file review exercise, together with a review of existing evidence. The report starts by identifying the key elements of high quality legal representation in asylum work drawing these together into a definition that will be used to identify how much high quality legal work costs to deliver. The research then establishes the key role that quality legal representation has to play in a cost effective decision making system. It then argues that the present LSC funding system acts to prevent quality provision.

The first report in this research project concluded that spending sufficient time to exercise knowledge and expertise and build a good relationship with the client is an essential ingredient to quality. It also pointed to evidence that quality work is more likely to achieve early resolution of the case, saving money in the long term.

A preliminary analysis of the file reviews conducted as part of this research shows a correlation between cost and quality and between quality and successful outcomes. Interviews with legal representatives, Home Office and judicial stakeholders suggest that quality appears to be suffering: for example, critical witness statements in adult cases have now become a rarity: it appears that only representatives committed to quality work continue to prepare them.

All providers who reach a minimum level of quality are currently paid an identical fee under the Graduated Fee Scheme, reducing the incentive to strive for high quality, in effect penalising those firms that do, and forcing the choice between financial survival and responsibility to their clients.

• Download the report (PDF)

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Tough times for immigration lawyer

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Source: MRN

By Ruth Grove-White

These are tough times for immigration lawyers and advisors, as shown by the lively discussion at the annual conference yesterday of the Immigration Advisory Service (IAS), one of the charities giving legal advice and representation to migrants in the UK.

Simon Hughes, Deputy Leader of the Lib Dems, opened the conference, giving a keynote speech about the stance of the coalition government on immigration and asylum. He said that immigration had proven one of the two key issues on which the two parties found it most difficult to find agreement (the other being Trident) - and hinted that the key policies which made it into the coalition manifesto, including a cap on economic migrants, were the source of ongoing debate between the two parties. The Lib Dem regularisation policy - dropped during coalition negotiations but which many including Hughes had been long-term advocates for - has continued to fuel plenty of backstage political analysis and debate as well. Hughes suggested that the tough economic climate to come might give rise to a new set of justifications for a regularisation in a couple of years.

A number of meaty legal issues came up at the IAS conference - including the increasing difficulties of getting, and providing, publicly funded legal advice on immigration and asylum, as a result of changes to legal aid regulations by the Legal Services Commission. The big elephant in the room was of course the recently closed Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ), and there was real debate over whether the hundreds of  people whose cases have been left unresolved by the closure of RMJ have been properly handed over to other casework teams.

Other concerns at the conference included the introduction of the new interim cap - reported by lawyers at the conference to have already caused difficulties for many employers who have found their certificates of sponsorship curtailed. There was also lively discussion about the planned introduction of earned citizenship next year - it may have gone quiet under the coalition government, but has it gone away?

There were, however, some developments to celebrate. Two recent court cases - English UK vs the Secretary of State for the Home Department (SSHD) home secretary case and Pankina vs the SSHD - have been successful in challenging some particularly unfair aspects of the Points Based System, and checking the way the government can operate the 'flexibility' of the PBS.  See our blog on this for more.

So, as ever, much to worry about -  new threats on the horizon will be compounded by the major cuts planned for both home office and ministry of justice budgets which could be as much as 40% of current budgets - but encouraging developments in the courts too, indicating that there may be other challenges to the PBS - and potentially to the new/interim immigration cap being drafted into this system too. Watch this space...

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Death of a charity

Source: Left Foot Forward

By Jill Rutter

On a normal Friday morning the offices of Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ) were busy with clients queuing up to attend appointments with their caseworkers. Today the 13 offices of RMJ are closed. The charity has folded, leaving up to 10,000 vulnerable people without legal representation. It is one of the biggest charity crashes in UK history. RMJ’s demise raises many important issues about the delivery of legal aid, about ‘advice’ for vulnerable people and about the dependence of charities on government funding.

Refugee and Migrant Justice was founded in 1992 at a time when asylum applications were increasing in the UK. Over the last 18 years it had given legal advice and representation to over 110,000 clients in its many offices and outreach surgeries across England and Wales. In recent years, just over half of its clients were asylum applicants. The charity also helped significant numbers of people who were living illegally in the UK present the full facts of their case to the UK Border Agency and obtain legal status or understand why they cannot obtain it.

RMJ had built a reputation for taking on complex asylum and immigration cases, often those that had been rejected by other firms of solicitors. There is considerable ‘cherry picking’ of asylum and immigration cases by some firms of solicitors, a trend worsened by a fixed fee system for legally-aided asylum and immigration. Research has shown that unscrupulous law firms are more than willing to take on easy cases, knowing that the fixed fee will more than cover their costs. But complex cases, for example, those of stateless persons, are turned away.

Over the years, RMJ’s work righted many wrongs. It secured the return to the UK of John Bosco Nyombi, a gay Ugandan man who was unlawfully removed from the UK. Nyombi was picked up by the UK Border Agency and told he was be taken to an interview about his case. Instead of taking him for this interview, Nyombi’s mobile phone was taken from him and he was flown back to Uganda. After his arrival in his home country, Nyombi was detained and beaten.

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End this 'inhumane and expensive' asylum system

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Source: The Guardian

By Caroline Slocock

My organisation, Refugee and Migrant Justice, is the largest specialist provider of legal representation to asylum seekers and the victims of trafficking. We are facing possible closure because of the last government's mistakes.

The new government has an opportunity to make Britain's asylum system fairer, faster and more humane. Labour policies to clear backlogs, tighten borders, and appear "tough" have resulted in an expensive, inefficient and inhumane system in which children are routinely locked up and many genuine cases turned down, only to be accepted at appeal – a costly process wasting money for the taxpayer.

The new administration's decisions to end the detention of children and review asylum and legal aid are potentially positive. But, despite this good start, decisions being taken on legal aid now may define this as the moment things went horribly wrong.

Good-quality legal representation is the key to speed and fairness and offers good value for money, but the last government's funding rules are squeezing this out.

A recent pilot project (PDF) in Solihull gave every asylum seeker access to a lawyer, who represented them when the Home Office decided their case. The pilot led to more asylum seekers being granted asylum early, and more cases being concluded within six months. Independent evaluation suggested significant overall savings because less money was being wasted downstream.

Access to quality legal representation early on is also crucial to reducing the number of families being detained and faced with forcible removal.

But despite the importance of good quality legal representation, legal aid no longer supports it. Most cases now receive a fixed fee, irrespective of time spent or quality of work. Short legal advice work, which cannot resolve cases, is paid the same as more time-consuming work to prepare witness statements, which are essential to good asylum decisions. Short cases, which are now paid over twice as much as before the changes, are now common, while witness statements are a rarity.

But the real killer is the Legal Services Commission's decision to pay for work only once the Home Office or the tribunals have reached a decision – which can take up to two years. Charities such as RMJ take on longer, more complex cases, so are badly hit. They don't have large reserves and can't get bank loans to pick up the government's debt. Many others are suffering too, and some have already gone under. The Law Centres Federation recently warned that many law centres "struggle with late payment".

Unfortunately, the new government has been advised to stick to the last government's rules on legal aid because they underpin a procurement exercise started but not completed by the previous administration. This exercise would lock in the current payment system for a further three years and ringfence it from the legal aid review. It will also prevent the "early legal advice process" – piloted so successfully in Solihull – from being adopted nationwide.

It's time for this government to break free from the last government's mistakes. If we are forced to close because of these delays in payments, more than 10,000 clients, including 900 unaccompanied children who receive free legal advice and representation from us, will be cut adrift. It's not only RMJ and other providers like us, but the whole asylum system that is being put at risk.

Caroline Slocock is the chief executive of Refugee and Migrant Justice

£11million wasted by ‘flawed’ UK asylum decision making

Source: Refugee and Migrant Justice

Refugee and Migrant Justice has criticised the Home Office for wasting an estimated £11million last year by making flawed decisions that had to be overturned on appeal.

The latest immigration figures, released by the Home Office in its quarterly statistical summary today, revealed 73 per cent of initial asylum claims were turned down by the Home Office in 2009. In the same year there were 14,595 asylum appeals lodged, 4,150 (28 per cent) of which were accepted at an independent tribunal.

A number of countries, such as Zimbabwe, Somalia and Eritrea, are well documented for human rights abuse and have extremely high rates of success at appeal tribunals, suggesting these cases were not being dealt with properly at the first stage.

Caroline Slocock, chief executive of Refugee and Migrant Justice said: 

“These statistics reveal a deterioration in the quality of decision making by the Home Office, which has been poor for some time. As a result, time and money is being wasted and the Government is struggling to meet its targets for resolving cases within six months.

“If our criminal justice system were exposed as having such poor decision making processes, there would be public uproar.

“The number of asylum applications winning on appeal has gone from one in four cases in 2008, to almost one in three. In some cases the figures are even more extreme – one in two appeals from Somalian-born applicants, and more than one in three for people from Zimbabwe.

“The Home Office’s Early Legal Advice Pilot in Solihull more time at the outset of applications resulted in the Home Office getting more decisions right first time, saving money and resolving more cases within six months.

“We welcome the Home Office’s commitment to roll out the pilot to another UK Border Agency region later this year. However, it must act faster to solve the problem of poor quality decision-making and stop millions of pounds being wasted.

Background information

Refugee and Migrant Justice, formerly the Refugee Legal Centre, is the largest specialist national provider of legal representation to asylum seekers and other vulnerable migrants. RMJ was awarded the Liberty/Justice Human Rights Award in 2005, in particular for its litigation work with Zimbabwean asylum seekers.

In 2007/2008 the Home Office ran a The Early Legal Advice Pilot, a pilot decision-making process in Solihull, to test the impact of giving asylum seekers early access to quality legal advice. Success rates at the initial stage in this pilot were considerably higher than the national average, and an independent evaluation concluded that it demonstrated potential for significant cost savings by reducing the number of cases that had to go to appeal. 

The average cost of an asylum appeal is £2,730.57. This breaks down to £1,477 for judicial salaries and fees, accommodation and IT costs; and £1,253.57 for support and accommodation. The real cost is likely to be much higher, as legal fees have not been included. These figures come from the Home Office report Evaluation of the Solihull Pilot, page 66 (PDF). 

In 2009 there were 24,550 asylum applications made in the UK in 2009 – 73 per cent of these were refused at the initial stage.

• Home Office 2009 figures (PDF)

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