Cuts to legal aid provision over the last 14 years have created a severe shortage of immigration advice, and the quality of the advice that is available has declined. Amidst the Hostile Environment, the legal aid crisis is a key driver of destitution. We therefore carried out a community consultation with people experiencing destitution and frontline organisations supporting them, to understand the lived experiences of the legal aid crisis.
Key findings were:
- Because many are left to navigate the immigration and asylum system without any legal representation, they are more likely to become destitute, and will find it harder to escape destitution;
- People may feel forced to raise money for private solicitors, which, with all legal sources of income closed off, exposes people to risk of exploitation;
- Some in the asylum system fear that legal aid lawyers are not impartial, because they are government-funded;
- Those who can access lawyers, whether legal aid or private, often see failures of communication and failures of trust which damage their case;
- People can feel exploited by solicitors.
The legal aid crisis is therefore a central dimension of the ‘slow violence’ of destitution. Participants called for an increase in provision: not just more legal aid lawyers, but more lawyers with the relevant expertise, and who could show empathy.
Even within the legal aid crisis, our consultation identified missed opportunities where an early intervention could have made a significant difference. Short of system-wide change, participants therefore wanted to see:
- Guidance on how to work with lawyers and how to hold them to account;
- More information and support for navigating the immigration system;
- Mechanisms for providing feedback on lawyers.
Read the full write-up here.
Follow up
We will be running a session with GMIAU, Right to Remain and Migrants Organise about how to organisations can best support people through the legal aid crisis - and how we can raise people's voices to campaign for access to justice.