Justice Alliance UK submitted over 100 testimonials to Liberal Democrat Simon Hughes MP in advance of his meeting with Nick Clegg, Tom Brake and Lord McNally to discuss changes to legal aid.
The group is an alliance of legal organisations, charities, community groups, grass roots and other campaigning groups, trade unions and individuals who are united in opposition to the government's proposed reforms on legal aid and the criminal justice system.
Many of the testimonials are from organisations working with asylum seekers and refugees and explain how these proposals will particularly affect their organisations and those who they represent and support.
You can read the full submission here and we've excerpted some of the testimonials most relevant to the impact on refugees and asylum seekers below:
Refugee Children's Consortium
The cuts to civil legal aid will impact directly on the lives of refugee, migrant and trafficked children and make it even more difficult for them to get the protection and support that they need. These children are some of the most vulnerable in the UK, and they will be unable to get help and uphold their rights when they are let down by the system. For a homeless teenager wrongly denied support, a newly recognised refugee who is mistreated, or a child with special educational needs in an undocumented family there will be no access to justice.
Liberal Democrats for Seekers of Sanctuary
Liberal Democrats for Seekers of Sanctuary are strongly opposed to the proposed legal aid cuts and have spoken out, at the debate at our conference, demonstrating how money can be saved by ending indefinite detention. We welcome the concessions already made but regret that these do not include such as the ability for redress against injustice, abuse whilst in detention, and needing to prove certain status (ie those trafficked) in many cases. We are deeply concerned about the impact on the very vulnerable who are seeking sanctuary in the UK. Access to justice is a cornerstone of fairness for all.
Asylum Aid
Further legal aid cuts will be catastrophic for people who most need access to justice. This includes victims of rape and torture, and people who have been trafficked here to be exploited daily. They need quality legal advice – but the cuts threaten to strip away the expert help and representation which still just about exists. The Government can reduce its legal aid bill by improving the quality of asylum decisions. Charities have demanded this for years. So too, now, has the Home Affairs Committee. The current plan, to ignore these failings and insulate departments from challenge, is wholly unacceptable.
The Detention Forum
Every day, the UK detains thousands of migrants indefinitely in detention centres and prisons. They are incarcerated for the administrative convenience of the state. Many are highly vulnerable. The residence test will deny them access to legal advice and representation when they want to challenge abuses by the state. Justice that is only available for some is no justice at all. The residence test must be dropped if we are to protect the rule of law in this country.
Kent Refugee Help
Kent Refugee Help is concerned about the impact of the legal aid cuts on immigration detainees. A young man held indefinitely in prison after completion of his sentence for a minor offence went on hunger strike. He was determined to die, despairing of ever being released as his embassy could not obtain a travel document to deport him. A legal aid lawyer took his case to fight his unlawful detention and this saved his life. LASPO has already had a severe impact on the number of legal aid solicitors doing this specialist work and the current proposals will worsen the situation. We fear for the safety of those we help.
Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI)
JCWI represents some of the most vulnerable and marginalised people in the country – migrants, some who have little understanding of the UK's judicial process. At present we are representing a 19 year old who is facing deportation who would otherwise be expected to cross examine police officers and his own mother to stand any chance of stopping his own deportation. This appears to us to be more than a step back in legal provision, but a step back through the ages to a time where justice is available to the more privileged and educated in society. It is positively medieval.
Detention Action
Justice must be for everyone, or it is no justice. The residence test will exclude some of the most vulnerable people in the country from justice. It will create a class of people who can be abused with impunity. They will still have rights, but will be unable to access them. They will have no redress if they are abused in detention or unlawfully made homeless. Unlawfully detained migrants who qualify for legal aid will find no solicitors to represent them because judicial review work will be financially unviable. There is no rule of law if the law is inaccessible.
Southall Black Sisters
The Residence Test will prevent many destitute women and children fleeing an abusive environment from exercising their legal rights. Without legal aid, Raheena would have been unable to challenge an unlawful decision by the UK Border Agency to refuse her application to remain in the UK on the basis of domestic violence. Without legal aid, Raheena would have been unable to challenge an unlawful decision by Social Services to assist only her daughter and leave her homeless and destitute. Without legal aid, Raheena would have been faced with a stark choice of either returning to Ethiopia with her daughter or face deportation and the loss of her child to an abusive husband or to the local authority. Without legal aid, be afraid.
Justice for Women
Two women detained at different times at Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre were allegedly sexually assaulted by male staff employed by Yarl's Wood. Their cases were featured in the Observer newspaper that exposed the scandal of sex abuse at Yarl's Wood. They know of other women who have been similarly abused at Yarl's Wood. The Government wants to remove legal aid from people who don't pass the residence test and this would apply to these women. This would mean that they would never have had assistance from a lawyer to challenge the investigations conducted by Serco and UKBA, to seek redress for the harm done and to help bring these issues to public awareness. Without legal aid lawyers it is much less likely that the authorities would be held to account. The Liberal Democrats were instrumental in ending the detention of children in Yarl's Wood and it was partly as a result of legal aid lawyers that the harm caused to children in detention was brought to the public's attention. As the deputy prime minister, we ask you to ensure that the human rights of all, including those detained, are protected.
Refugee Youth
We are Refugee Youth, a community of young people from all over the world who are now living in the UK. We come from many different backgrounds; most of us are refugees or still in the process of seeking asylum. Many of us came to the UK without family. The proposed cuts to legal aid would put a lot of young refugees in danger because we don't understand the systems. 'If I hadn't had that Legal Aid I don't know what I would have done. I didn't have a penny to pay for a lawyer and if I had to represent myself I would have no idea what evidence to provide.' Young member of Refugee Youth, 19, Eritrea
Churches Refugee Network
The Churches Refugee Network is in association with the ecumenical Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. Its steering committee membership represents support work with migrants and asylum seekers across the voluntary sector, both legal and social, and religious. We are very critical of the proposed changes to legal aid and to judicial review. Despite poor decision making by the Home Office, Court and Tribunals being the cause of many asylum and immigration JRs funded by legal aid, nothing is proposed to address this. As for the small number of JRs brought by interest groups, the Government admits these have a higher success rate than those brought by individuals. This should be an incentive to improve processes and access to justice. Instead the proposals will undermine the constitutional role of JR. It is crucial in public law that someone can hold decision-makers to account. Cases of gross injustice may not be able to be redressed unless a challenge can be brought by an NGO, charity, faith group, or campaigning group
Women for Refugee Women
We are very concerned about the impact that legal aid cuts will have and are already having on the vulnerable women with whom we work. Women who have sought asylum in the UK are typically survivors of extreme human rights abuses. While legal aid is theoretically still available for their asylum cases, in practice we are finding that there are fewer lawyers able to deal with their cases as a result of existing restrictions, which means that women are struggling to get a fair hearing. We are deeply concerned about the impact of further restrictions on their ability to challenge unfair decisions on their asylum cases or challenge denials of support and accommodation, or to bring perpetrators of abuse or violence to justice. These proposals will damage the lives of some of the most vulnerable women in our society.
South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group
As a group which includes many asylum seekers and refugees, we in the South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group (SYMAAG) are very concerned that the cuts in legal aid will deny access to justice to migrants. The extent to which Home Office decision on asylum cases are overturned at tribunals shows that many of these initial decisions are erroneous. But we fear that the changes proposed by the Ministry of Justice will make it much more difficult for refused asylum seekers to gain access to legal advice. This could ultimately have very serious consequences. We are aware of asylum seekers being returned to countries where they suffer serious abuse. Access to legal help is vital if the UK is to fulfil its obligations under the 1951 Convention.
Asylum Support and Immigration Resource Team (ASIRT)
ASIRT works with asylum seekers and irregular migrants, who are among the most disadvantaged and marginalised members of British society. Routinely, we see statutory bodies, such as the Home Office and Local Authority social service departments, disregarding our clients' rights and making decisions which fly in the face not only of legal precedent, but also of justice. Denial of our service users' access to the courts will yet further entrench the social exclusion to which they are already subjected, helping to ensure the existence of an impoverished and alienated underclass in our inner cities.
Refugee Action
Refugee Action objects to the erosion of the rule of law that we believe will be brought about by the MoJ's proposals. We strongly believe that in our adversarial legal system there must be equality of arms in order to ensure justice. In our view, access to justice is a universal right with no qualification based on nationality or immigration status. The MoJ's proposals threaten these fundamental principles by cherry-picking groups of people who will be excluded from access to legal aid to protect them against injustice or to challenge unfair decision-making. The impact of these measures, we believe, is to create an underclass of people who have the potential to be abused at will with no meaningful recourse to the courts.
The Refugee Council
The rationale for these cuts is deeply flawed as the Government has conceded that the savings they generate will be negligible. Meanwhile the human costs will be extremely high, as people whose life and liberty is at stake are denied access to justice. By targeting those in our society most likely to suffer from arbitrary and unjust decision making by the authorities, but least able to defend themselves, and to do so for crude political advantage, smacks of scapegoating and a cynical pandering to prejudice. We urge the Government to think again about these unnecessary and highly damaging cuts.