Legal Aid

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, finding myself properly behind and below a formidable list of speakers, I should first explain why I entered the Chamber. As in previous debates, I remain concerned about the ability of asylum seekers, migrants, trafficked persons and detainees to obtain legal aid following recent cuts and LASPO changes. Our inherited sense of justice, backed up, as we have heard, by the ECHR Article 5, requires that we maintain the status of their claims among all the other priorities facing our legal aid system.

Many lawyers are rightly up in arms about the cutting of legal aid for all kinds of reasons—most rehearsed today. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, is leading the review, since it is rightly a major concern of the old and new Labour Party. Family law, domestic violence, poverty and indebtedness all have their claims on public money, and I recognise that asylum and immigration generate a lot of claims and difficulties of interpretation for which exceptional case funding may well not be available. However, asylum, migration and trafficking are way down the list on the GOV.UK website, coming at number nine out of 12 things that you can get legal aid for.

I am aware that these issues are causing the Government more trouble and that the numbers keep going up, but we also have an exceptionally disturbed world, especially when it comes to Syrian refugees. Once they have arrived, we have a clear humanitarian duty to look after them until they are either safely returned home or accepted into our society. Those in limbo between those two alternatives are often detained for long undefined periods in immigration detention centres. I had the opportunity in the past to visit a number of these IRCs, such as Haslar, Campsfield, Oakington, Yarl’s Wood and Harmondsworth, and little seems to have changed since I was a member of the Independent Asylum Commission some years ago.

A year ago the charity Detention Action quoted detainees’ typical comments, such as, “I felt completely helpless”, “I was scared”, “You feel trapped”, and, “The Home Office had turned off my brain for three and a half years”. This is not the time to re-examine the law governing detention centres, the length of detention or the rules and conditions in those centres, though some of us may have that opportunity during the Immigration Bill. I mention them only because many of the inmates who are seeking legal redress, whatever the merits of the Home Office’s case against them, are still finding it difficult to get proper representation.

We forget that many detainees are not isolated individuals but have families in this country. An organisation for which I have the highest regard, Bail for Immigration Detainees, in a report entitled Rough Justice, recently looked at the cases of 102 parents who had been separated from their children by immigration detention during an 18-month period in 2013-14. They left detention between 1 April 2013 and 30 September 2014. In most cases they were detained pending deportation or removal to countries like Somalia, Iraq and Zimbabwe. Criminal convictions were often triggered by non-violent offences such as theft and false documents. Only half of these parents had current access to a legal representative, most of them to a legal aid solicitor, and 11% had never had access to a legal representative. Some 77% of the detainees who had access had to wait longer than a week to make an appointment, and one in 20 had to wait longer than a month. Fewer than half the detainees who did contact a solicitor were subsequently taken on as a client, and even among the detainees who had legal aid representation, just one in three had a bail application made on their behalf by their legal representative. The survey also revealed details of the 219 children of these detainees. Nearly all of those for whom data were available were born in the UK, and 80% were even British citizens. Most of their parents had therefore lived in the UK for long periods. One in five was deported or removed without their children.

These figures provide a fairly grim picture of a system that the Government claim to be inclusive and accessible. On the present trend of cuts and savings, which many see as inevitable, conditions are likely to get worse and exceptional circumstances are likely to be fewer. Out of 102 detainees surveyed by BID, only two were known to have applied for exceptional case funding, and only one of these was successful after a long court battle, which ties in with what the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, was saying. Having said this, I very much hope that the Minister will contradict me and point out that exceptional cases are not being reduced and that cuts in funding will not affect immigrants and asylum seekers disproportionately.

Noble Lords will know better than me that the Government have acted on at least some of the 2013 JCHR report recommendations. One sentence caught my eye:

“We remain concerned that refugees may be unable to access civil legal aid during their first few months of lawful residence in the UK”.

Given that the gateway programme is considerably expanded owing to the Syrian crisis, will the Minister assure us that the UK’s international obligations will be met and that civil legal aid will be available to all new refugees?