Stephanie Harrison made QC, concerned by continued attacks on access to the law for refugees and migrants

Barrister Stephanie Harrison of Garden Court Chambers, well know for her work on asylum, is to be appointed as Queen's Counsel, Garden Court reports.

Harrison was quoted by Garden Court as saying: "I treat my appointment as Queen's Counsel as a recognition of the complexity and importance of the law relating to the treatment of refugees and migrants who have faced an onslaught of increasingly repressive, abusive and discriminatory measures throughout the 20 years of my practice."

She continued: "This has been at the hands of successive governments pursuing a populist prejudice with little if any regard for the fundamental rights of these ethnic and religious minorities including the most vulnerable amongst them: victims of torture and sex trafficking, unaccompanied children and the mentally ill."

Harrison said that she was gravely concerned that the current Coalition government has taken "the unprecedented step of excluding from April 2013 immigration cases concerning the rights of families and children from public funding altogether so that these important cases will not receive the high quality legal advice and representation they require and which has been provided by dedicated publicly funded lawyers with whom I have had the privilege to work."

"Equal access to the law as a client or as a career has been the hallmark of our work at Garden Court and my practice within it. We will need to re-double our efforts as both come under increasing attack," she added.