Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many requests were made for legal assistance by asylum applicants in relation to their initial asylum application in 2021.
Information about the total number of requests for this type of legal assistance is not held. Such assistance, where provided by legal aid, is funded under the ‘Legal Help’ scheme. Decisions about eligibility for this form of services are delegated to legal aid providers. As such applications are not made directly to the Legal Aid Agency (LAA). Consequently, the LAA does not hold data regarding overall volumes of requests for assistance or the number of requests for assistance that are refused.
Some information regarding overall volumes of immigration and asylum cases funded under Legal Help is published in the LAA’s official statistics at table 5.1-5.3. The statistics can be accessed via the following link https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/legal-aid-statistics-july-to-september-2021.