Justice for asylum seekers in the UK?

Proposals to reform legal aid in the UK will leave asylum seekers ever more dependent on the good will of solicitors and ‘justice through benevolence’, say Chloé Lewis and Azeemah Kola

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Welcoming refugees, opposing indefinite detention

Though much of the media focus on the issues of asylum seekers and refugees (as well as migration more generally) is filtered through a prism of fear and the instinct to exclude, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) – whose 8-10 April 2011 annual delegate conference I am attending – continues to work hard for fair reporting and justice.

At a well-attended NUJ fringe meeting today, we heard moving and disturbing stories from three journalists seeking asylum: Charles Atangana, Alieu Ceesay and James Fallah-Williams.

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Newspaper entrapment leads to miscarriages of justice

The criminal cases review commission has called the conviction of an Albanian man for drug offences ‘unsafe’. The conviction was initially reported by the News of the World and involved a man who has previously admitted to entrapment.

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Source: Guardian

Sledgehammer approach to forced marriage rejected

By Frances Webber

The Court of Appeal has told the Home Office to disapply marriage rules for the majority of couples applying for a visa.

In November 2008, the Home Office amended the immigration rules to require that only couples over 21 could benefit from family reunion. Applications by under-21s to join spouses here, or applications by older spouses to join partners here who were under21, were to be refused. Prior to that date, couples had to be 18, and until 2003 spouses were free to join partners in the UK provided both parties were over 16. The justification for the rule change was said by the Home Office to be to prevent forced marriages.

The rule caused a great deal of hardship and anger in migrant communities. A group of organisations, including the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), Advice on Individual Rights in Europe (the AIRE Centre), the Asian Community Action Group in Sheffield, Southall Black Sisters and the Henna Foundation, got together to launch a challenge to the new rules, on the ground that they took a sledgehammer approach to forced marriage which penalised large numbers of innocent couples. The test case they took involved two couples, Diego and Amber Aguilar and Shakira Bibi and Suhayl Mohammed, both of whom were under 21 when they married. Chilean Diego Aguilar met and fell in love with 17-year-old Amber Jeffery, a British citizen, while he was studying in the UK. They married, but his application to stay was refused. To remain together, Amber had to go with Diego to Chile, giving up her place on a degree course in modern languages to do so. Shakira and Suhayl were both 18when they married in Pakistan, but Shakira’s application to join her British husband was refused and the couple have lived apart since.

At the hearing in October 2010, the Home Office representative claimed that there might have been up to 8,000 forced marriages in 2008 and that up to a third of them involved a partner between the ages of 18 and20. But the Home Office’s own evidence showed that its Forced Marriage Unit considered only 4 per cent of marriages between 18-20-year-olds to be forced, meaning that 96 per cent were voluntary.

In an important ruling, the Court of Appeal held that raising the minimum age of entry to the UK for spouses did little to combat forced marriage, but directly and disproportionately interfered with the right of British citizens and their spouses to live together. ‘The rule subjects all young couples to an unspoken but irrebuttable presumption that their marriage is a forced one,’ said Lord Justice Sedley. ‘The arbitrary and disruptive impact of the rule on the lives of a large number of innocent young people makes it impossible to justify.’ The court was not prepared to quash the rule as completely irrational, but ruled that the Home Office could not insist on a minimum age of 21in cases of voluntary marriage. It was left to the secretary of state to work out how to apply the court’s judgment, but a blanket ban on the entry of under-21s is no longer an option.

Source: Institute of Race Relations

Coalition campaign: ‘Justice for All’

More than 500 individuals and organisations have joined the ‘Justice for All’ campaign in the two weeks since the Government published a Green Paper on Reform of Legal Aid.

The Government’s Green Paper outlines major cuts to legal aid funding. Legal aid supports some of the most vulnerable people to make sure they get treated fairly, in areas like debt, employment, housing, divorce and benefit decisions. But Government plans would cut legal advice on many of these vital issues, at a time when local authority support for free, independent advice is also being squeezed.

The Justice for All coalition is campaigning to ensure everyone is treated fairly under the law, no matter who they are, how much money they have or where they live. Organisations as diverse as Mind, National Aids Trust, Unite the Union and Kids Company have joined the campaign, as well as charities offering legal help like Law Centres Federation and Citizens Advice bureaux.

As well as cutting all legal aid funding for some of areas of law, the Ministry of Justice plans to make a £350 million saving by asking people on low incomes to pay more towards their legal costs and cutting the lowest fees for legal aid lawyers and not-for-profit advice agencies.

The campaign coalition is urging individuals and organisations to join the campaign for free legal advice, because your rights matter.

Click here to join or find out more

Equality and Diversity Forum

Consultation on Legal Aid reform

On 15 November 2010, the Ministry of Justice published a consultation on ‘Proposals for the Reform of Legal Aid in England and Wales’.

The Ministry of Justice states that ‘[t]his consultation seeks views on proposals for reform of legal aid in England and Wales. The proposals represent a radical, wide-ranging and ambitious programme of reform which aims to ensure that legal aid is targeted to those who need it most, for those cases in which legal advice or representation is justified.’

The consultation closes on 14 February 2010.

On 15 November, the Ministry of Justice also published a consultation on ‘Proposals for reform of civil litigation funding and costs in England and Wales’. This consultation seeks views on implementing a package of Lord Justice Jackson’s proposals for reforming conditional fee agreements and other aspects of civil litigation funding and costs. It also runs until 14 February 2010.

Click here for link to Legal Aid consultation

Click here for link to civil litigation consultation

Equality and Diversity Forum

The worst day ever for legal aid

Swingeing cuts to the legal aid budget were always going to be painful. But it’s the tone that really hurts

By Afua Hirsch

It’s not just the content of the new Green Paper on legal aid that disturbs, although there is plenty that does.

For the first time that I can recall, Labour’s “salami-slicing” – over 30 consultations about legal aid since 2006 – seem almost benevolent, determined as they then were to protect areas of civil law where people suffering elsewhere from the recession would be particularly vulnerable.

Now instead whole swathes of law where free legal advice was available to the poorest people – on debt, welfare, housing, immigration, employment, family – the list goes on – will simply be removed from legal aid. In many of those areas if you have a problem, and it doesn’t matter how serious, how unjust, how strong your case, you will be completely on your own.

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Legal aid withdrawal to affect thousands

Hundreds of thousands of people with family and housing law problems will no longer have access to free legal advice under government proposals announced today.

Measures proposing the most drastic cuts to legal aid in its 60-year history would seek to reduce the number of civil law cases by 547,000 a year in what ministers describe as an attempt to save money and “discourage a culture of litigation”.

“At more than £2bn per year, we currently have one of the most expensive legal aid systems in the world,” said the justice minister, Jonathan Djanogly.

“In civil legal aid and private family law people are too often willing to hand over their personal problems to the state … there is a lack of appreciation of the implications of going to court. The need to make savings provides us with the impetus and urgency for change.”

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Also read: Legal aid cuts hamper justice

Legal aid cuts are a brutal shrinkage of justice

Legal aid cuts: the aftermath

Churches challenge government over poverty and welfare

Churches and church organisations have told the government that its welfare proposals are based on a failure to understand the plight of the poor.

They argue that constructive reforms are at risk of being lost under a wave of punitive measures and cost-cutting.

The Methodist Church, the Church of Scotland, the United Reformed Church, the Baptist Union of Great Britain, Housing Justice and Church Action on Poverty have welcomed plans for a simplified benefits system, but have raised concerns that the proposed reforms are based on inaccurate assumptions about the poor.

“There is a serious danger that people living in poverty will be stigmatised by government announcements that imply they are lazy or work-shy,” said the Rev Alison Tomlin, President of the Methodist Conference.

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Defend the right to asylum

THE RIGHT to asylum is under political attack across Europe. In Britain, one of the Con-Dem coalition’s first acts was to close the charity, Refugee and Migrant Justice, leaving thousands of asylum seekers without legal advice and representation.

Eric Segal

The media often portray asylum seekers as part of Britain’s economic crisis. As if a few thousand desperate, vulnerable people could have caused this massive economic chaos rather than the City spivs and racketeers!

Socialists defend the right to asylum in Britain and internationally. Most asylum seekers are asking for refuge because capitalism, in Britain and internationally, pursues profits relentlessly while creating poverty, building up the power of dictatorial rulers and stirring up ethnic and other divisions in their own countries.

Before 1905 the UK had no legal immigration controls or right to asylum. The 1905 Aliens Act aimed to exclude Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia. It excluded the poor and the sick, but for the first time a limited legal concession was granted for those seeking asylum. In 1906, despite the obstacles, 500 refugees managed to enter the UK under the 1905 Act.

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