Citizens Advice calls for publicly-funded legal representation for asylum support appeals

The lack of publicly-funded legal representation for asylum support appeals means that some of society’s most vulnerable people are being failed says a new report published today by Citizens Advice. Supporting justice, a study of the decisions made by the Asylum Support Tribunal (AST) between October 2008 and March 2009, found that the majority of appellants - asylum seekers and failed asylum seekers - are unrepresented and as many as one in three oral appellants receive no legal advice or assistance of any kind.

Every year some 2,000 asylum seekers and failed asylum seekers appeal to the AST. Most speak little or no English, many are struggling to survive financially and some have serious mental health problems, commonly linked to their precarious situation in the UK.

Supporting justice found that:

• 80% of appellants need an interpreter to participate in the hearing
• 80% of appellants are either already homeless and/or destitute, or will become so if their appeal to the AST is dismissed

During the period covered in Supporting justice, appellants were legally represented in only 24% of cases heard orally. Yet the report found that the direct impact of legal representation at the AST was staggering: whereas only 38.6% of appellants with no legal representation or pre-legal advice were successful in their appeals, the success rate for those who were legally represented at the hearing rose to 71.3%.

The national charity is calling on the Government to provide publicly-funded legal representation for asylum seekers and failed asylum seekers appealing (to the AST) against a refusal or termination of asylum support.

The level of representation experienced by those passing though the AST is shown to be especially poor when compared with other tribunals that deal with particularly vulnerable users, such as the Mental Health Review Tribunal (99% represented) and the Asylum and Immigration Support Tribunal (90%).

The report recommends that:

• The Ministry of Justice should provide for publicly funded legal representation in oral hearings before the AST. This should include pre-hearing support and advice.
• The UK Border Agency should take urgent steps to improve the quality of its decision making and should work with the AST to establish a mechanism for feed-back on the quality of its initial asylum support decisions.
• Targets should be set by the UK Border Agency for improving the quality of its initial decision making on asylum support.

Supporting justice suggests that the annual up-front cost of providing such representation – of the order of £300,000 – could be met entirely from the savings that would flow from an improvement in the quality of the UK Border Agency’s initial decision-making on asylum support.

Notes to editors

1. The Citizens Advice service is a network of independent charities that helps people resolve their money, legal and other problems by providing information and advice and by influencing policymakers. For more information in England and Wales www.citizensadvice.org.uk
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