Legal aid cuts endanger asylum seekers
Human rights charity Amnesty International has warned that planned cuts to legal aid may jeopardise the lives of asylum-seekers who could be returned to persecution without a fair hearing in the UK.
The Government has proposed the restriction of legal aid in asylum cases by imposing time restrictions at the initial application stage.
Amnesty claims that that this may be a ‘direct obstacle’ to case preparation which can be particularly complex in asylum cases. The charity says that the cuts may contravene both international refugee law and domestic human rights commitments.
In the past the Government has committed itself to the provision of publicly funded legal services as a means of ‘promoting social justice’; cuts to legal aid may prevent this.
Jan Shaw, director of Amnesty International’s UK Refugee Affairs Programme said that the cutbacks will erode legal protection for asylum-seekers and heighten the risk of people being wrongly returned to countries such as Iraq and Somalia where access to justice is regularly denied.
‘The government needs to listen to legal practitioners and other experts who are saying that it is just not possible to have a ‘one-size-fits-all’ legal aid system and also deal with complex asylum cases involving often highly vulnerable people,’ he explained.
The charity has submitted a response to the government’s Department for Constitutional Affairs, warning that the cuts will result in the closure of reputable legal firms dealing with asylum.
