A case of austerity machismo

Within weeks of taking over at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) Jonathan Djanogly, then minister responsible for legal aid, faced a crisis as Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ) was close to collapse due to cash-flow problems. RMJ employed 350 staff and undertook more than 10,000 asylum and immigration cases a year. The organisation had experienced difficulties since the change over to fixed fees for the not-for -profit sector in April 2009. They appealed to the government to bail them out by reverting to paying for work in progress on cases rather than waiting until the case was closed.

Caroline Slocock, RMJ's chief executive, had been working behind the scenes for months to try and persuade the government to rescue the organisation. Such a move was not without precedent, as the previous legal aid minister Lord Bach had been persuaded to put together a bail out plan for South West London Law Centre in February 2010. A grant of £235,000 had been given from the MoJ to help the centre survive by restructuring. Bach pushed this through despite opposition from civil servants who took the view the centre was inefficient and should be allowed to fold.

According to Slocock, she had met Lord Bach and discussed RMJ's problems with him. Bach said he would 'do something' but a few days after meeting him the general election was called. The resourceful Slocock, who had good contacts with the Conservatives, having worked as a civil servant in Number 10 with Margaret Thatcher, tried to secure a meeting with Jonathan Djanogly, Bach's successor, but to no avail. The minister was not for meeting.

With nothing to lose, RMJ went public with its campaign to persuade the government to save the organisation. Much effort went to into lobbying politicians and others and a high profile media campaign was launched. A consortium supported by the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Simon Hughes MP, was established to raise cash. It succeeded in raising £76,000 in 24 hours, but there was never any question that Jonathan Djanogly would lean on his officials to find a way to help the organisation. His view was: 'Why are we funding them?' and that they 'are badly run'. RMJ was allowed to close in June 2010 leaving 10,000 cases to be reallocated among other providers who were reluctant to take them on.

One after the other

A year later, the Immigration Advisory Service (IAS) also went into administration. The organisation had experienced cash-flow problems similar to RMJ. It worked out of 12 offices across the country, and this time over 25,000 live cases were left to be reallocated. One senior official told LAG that ministers were not as susceptible to pressure from RMJ and IAS as the previous government might have been because, they took the view that the coalition was going to get a bad press anyway for the first two years, and so they 'were not going to be bothered by bad stories in the press about charities closing'. The RMJ episode can be seem as the first illustration of an austerity machismo that developed among ministers and government politicians as the legislation on legal aid made its way through the parliamentary process.

In response to the proposed changes in legal aid in immigration cases LAG has launched its Immigration and Asylum Law Project. Its main purpose is to try and maximise the availability of legal aid and other services to this client group. Baljeet Sandhu, solicitor and co-director of the Refugee Children's Rights Project based at Islington Law Centre sits on the steering committee for the project. She foresees potential for challenges under the Human Rights Act particularly for clients from vulnerable groups such as young people and people with mental health problems. 'Many people will now be left in a desperate state without access to legal aid for immigration advice. The government seem to believe that social workers can transform into lawyers when necessary and advise young people in their care on immigration issues, asserting that 'simple form filling' is required. There is clearly a failure to understand the complex legal issues that often arise in such cases and the experience required to unpack an individual child's case in order to determine what rights and remedies they may have in law.'

Sandu is also concerned about 'a complete lack of understanding around the impact such proposals will have on the duties and responsibilities of already overstretched local authorities'. She believes that the 'risks posed to young people and professionals working with them are immense'.
Proposals such as this are simply knee jerk reactions to try and plug fundamental flaws in the new legal aid regime. Immigration advisers must be regulated and to provide advice while unregulated amounts to a criminal offence,' says Sandu.

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Interrelated problems

Many practitioners believe that the government's attempt to withdraw advice completely on non-asylum issues will potentially come unstuck as it is difficult to uncouple interrelated problems within immigration, detention and asylum cases. There are other cases as well in which the withdrawal of legal aid will have unforeseen consequences. Sandu gives the example of cases the law centre has dealt with elderly people who have never regularised their immigration status, but have lived in the UK all their adult lives without ever knowing that there was a question over their status. She asks 'What are they supposed to do?'.