Refugee and Migrant Justice facing collapse
Article published: Saturday, June 12th 2010
Leading legal aid charity Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ) is warning that it faces collapse due to changes in government funding. Up to 10,000 asylum seekers, including 900 unaccompanied children, may be left without representation.
Changes to legal aid rules that only provide funding once a case is completed could leave the charity waiting between six months and two years to receive payment, according to a RMJ spokesperson.
Caroline Slocock, the charity’s chief executive, said the new funding regulations will make the charity’s work unsustainable, stressing that RMJ was “not asking for new money, simply prompt payment of legal aid for the work it has carried out.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury has joined a campaign to save the charity, alongside representatives from Amnesty International, the children’s charity Bernardos and Shami Chakrabarti of the human rights group Liberty. On 1 June they sent a joint letter to Justice Minister Kenneth Clarke and are urging supporters to do the same demanding due payments be made immediately.
The Ministry of Justice is claiming that the charity has had three years to prepare and that the funding changes are necessary to increase efficiency.
“The resources for legal aid are finite and therefore we must make the best use of those available. Other organisations have successfully made this transition and it is only reasonable to expect Refugee and Migrant Justice to do the same,” a Ministry spokesperson.
Slocock responded that RMJ had made “strenuous and successful efforts to live with reduced levels of payments,” pointing out that the problem of delayed payments was a separate issue:
“Until recently we were given regular, ongoing payments for the work we do. As a not-for-profit organisation we cannot expect to make sufficient profit to finance millions of pounds of working capital.”
In addition to the humanitarian costs the Government’s stated justification of financial efficiency might not add up, according to a report published by the RMJ.
Legal aid is paid at a fixed rate rather than by the hour under rules set by the previous government. Furthermore, minimum standards are set so low that they “do not require that tactics and strategies are employed to receive the best quality for clients.”
As a result, the report argued firms are effectively penalised for putting in good work and often face “a choice between financial survival and responsibility for clients.” This was despite findings of a correlation between the length of time spent on a case, the quality of the work and quick and cost effective resolution of cases.
Past experience appears to corroborate the study.
In 2007 a government policy experiment called the Solihull Pilot guaranteed quality legal representation to asylum seekers from the beginning of the asylum process. During the pilot the number of asylum seekers recognised as refugees rose, with the official report noting that the asylum claimants were able to better understand the process and be more engaged with their claim.
However, the cost to the taxpayer fell sharply due to cases being concluded more quickly with a significantly lower number of appeals. The report predicted that there would be “a tremendous saving to the public purse” if the same results could be implemented nationally. Three years on, that has yet to happen.
Richard Goulding
The Red Cross are holding a free event in Manchester on refugee and asylum issues in the UK. It takes place in the Martin Harris building at the University of Manchester on 22 June.
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[…] years have seen the collapse of two major advice providers, the Immigration Advisory Service and Refugee and Migrant Justice, following restrictive reforms to government funding, and the closure of most of the services […]
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