Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Lord Bach and Lord Avebury

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Avebury]

I was saying that I hope that this note, which we have all received from the UNHCR, has been sent by the UNHCR representative in the United Kingdom to noble Lords on the Front Bench. I look forward very much to knowing how they have replied.

As my noble friend has already pointed out, the UNHCR is concerned because, although the safeguarding of asylum seekers’ access to legal aid is being retained, it is worried about the way in which the Bill limits access to legal aid for families of refugees who seek to rejoin their family members in the United Kingdom. The UNHCR notes with concern that,

“the current proposals exclude legal aid for family members of persons who have been recognised as refugees or people who have been granted humanitarian protection”.

I cannot think of a more powerful agency to make representations of this kind than the UNHCR. It almost goes as far as to say that it is a breach of the refugee convention to deny legal aid to the family members. As my noble friend pointed out, the UNHCR believes that,

“reunification of the family unit plays an important role in ensuring the protection and well-being of individual members of a refugee family”.

It goes on to describe the adverse consequences that may follow from the denial of legal aid for these purposes.

One point on which I think I should add to my noble friend’s comments is on disputed family relationships, which are frequently a matter of continued difference between the UKBA and the applicant and which have to be resolved by reference to, for example, DNA evidence. The UNHCR asks how the costs of evidence gathering and the private legal fees that have to be borne in connection with this process can be borne by the refugee and his family. It notes that,

“the Government’s response during the consultation stage was that family reunion applications are ‘generally straightforward’ and that an alternative for family members is to claim asylum in their own right”.

However, the UNHCR points out that, since a refugee family are still outside the United Kingdom, they are not able to claim asylum in their own right—they would have to travel illegally to the United Kingdom to make such an application. Is that what the Government want them to do? It seems to me that, by denying them legal aid, the Government are inciting them to break our immigration laws and enter by some other means in order that they can claim asylum here in their own right. This cannot be right, and I hope that my noble friend will consider these amendments very seriously.

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, I can be very brief. The arguments put forward for these amendments are very powerful and I have nothing to add to them, save to say that this relates to families, and one of things that this Government claim—as all Governments do, quite rightly—is their faith in the family. It would be slightly ironic if the Government went on with the Bill as it is now published, in terms of the effect that this may have on refugee families, when they have the answers given to them by the exception provided for in the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford. We think the Government should accept his amendment.