Legal aid
Refugee Council and Refugee Action joint response to: “Consultation on the Proposed Amendments to the General Civil Contract (Solicitors) and General Civil Contract (NfP) Relating to Immigration and Asylum Work” [March 2006]
In March 2006, the Legal Services Commission published a consultation paper announcing their intention to impose a performance standard for immigration cases at the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. The proposals require a minimum success rate of 40% for lawyers seeking funding for this work. Both the Refugee Council and Refugee Action have been increasingly concerned about the number of asylum seekers approaching their One Stop Services seeking legal representation for their appeals. This situation has grown steadily worse since the restrictions on legal aid first introduced in 2004 and the increasingly restrictive application of the merits test for funding appeals. This new performance standard can only make this worse. This response highlights the nature of the problem and argues that the increasingly restrictive entitlement to legal aid is effectively denying a right of appeal. Published in March 2006 |
