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Mr. Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow) (Lab): First, those of us who argued on Second Reading and on Report that the provisions on appeal were wrong must say to the Government that we are glad that they have listened. A significant shift has taken place. It is a pity that we had to wait until the measure went to another place for it to happen. Hon. Members of all parties who spoke about appeals on Report argued that the Government were wrong. However, I acknowledge that the Government have listened and we are grateful for this significant move.

Two matters have been flagged up as being of major concern. The first is the number of days for an appeal to be lodged and the second is legal aid. On the second point, I am more confused than when the debate began about the direction that we are taking. The discussion about whether the number of days should be five, seven or 10 resembles that about angels dancing on pinheads. The number is arbitrary. I question whether it would allow a proper appeals system to work. I await the first case after the introduction of the system in which the Home Office fails to meet the five-day target and it wants
 
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to appeal against a decision by the tribunal. I am sure that one will occur before too long. The five days apply to the Home Office as much as to an asylum claimant. I should be interested to note the number of such cases.

I can envisage circumstances in which asylum claimants will experience problems with a five-day timetable. We appear to be moving towards a system whereby asylum claimants are almost encouraged not to worry about getting legal advice, especially at the start of the process. I recently saw a transcript of an asylum seeker induction briefing DVD that is shown to asylum seekers in induction centres. It says about legal advice:

"You can seek legal advice if you want it; but the Home Office do not believe that you need legal advice to tell Asylum Casework about your reasons for claiming asylum".

I appreciate that that is at the beginning of the process rather than at appeal, but it does not really encourage people to get their cases presented properly in the first place, which would cut many unnecessary appeals.

6 pm

I can also envisage situations in which someone would want to change their lawyer, either because they do not believe that the lawyer who has been dealing with their case when it has gone to the tribunal has handled it properly, or because the lawyer who dealt with that stage was not available, for some reason, to deal with any further reconsideration.

Mr. Oaten: The hon. Gentleman has touched on an issue that concerns me. As the process gets more complex, and as the grounds for appeal get more technical and detailed, people may want to switch to much more specialist lawyers. There is a good case, therefore, for individuals to be encouraged to move to a different lawyer to tackle those complex legal arguments.

Mr. Gerrard: That may well be the case. I know that there are proposals along with the new systems to produce different levels of accreditation for people handling asylum cases, and I welcome some of what has been done over the past year or two to weed out some of the poor representatives around. I can think of examples from my local citizens advice bureau, which has a legal aid franchise to handle asylum and immigration cases, and in my view does it extremely well, although the person who does most of the work in that CAB does not have a legal qualification. I am sure that, were he faced with the situation of someone who had gone through a tribunal, and if he felt that there might be a point of law on which to argue, he would want to go to someone else to get that specialist advice. Five days will not always be enough to allow people to do that. Although the Minister said that it would be possible to make an application and to try to put an argument that a longer time limit should be allowed, five days is too tight in this area.

On the question of legal aid and no win, no fee or conditional fee arrangements, I am not sure about the direction in which we are going, given the promise that there will be further reconsideration in the other place. I have had some concerns about the way the amendment
 
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that came to us was drafted—it seemed to give extremely wide discretion to the Secretary of State to make regulations that would restrict the exercise of the power to make payments, depending on the outcome of the appeal. One phrase that I still do not understand is

"the nature of the appellant's legal representatives",

which would remain even with the Government's proposed amendments.

If we are to have a merits test, that is the right direction. I do not want cases with absolutely no merit being funded out of public funds. Certainly, I have seen cases in the present system in which solicitors have told asylum claimants who have lost at an adjudicator's appeal that they will put in an application to the immigration appeal tribunal. When one sees the paper that has been sent to the IAT, it has scribbled on it something along the lines of, "The adjudicator made an error in law." That is all that it says. It gives no indication of what the error in law is supposed to be. Clearly, there is no basis on which to assess that, as the argument is about credibility. The adjudicator has made a decision on credibility and the IAT is not going to get involved in an argument about credibility, as it will say that that is a matter for the adjudicator, and not for it.

I do not have a problem with trying to weed out cases that do not stand up or do not have genuine points of law to argue. One must give the solicitor the opportunity to have a proper merits test, however, and not after the event. That is what worried me about the proposal—decisions would be taken after the event, which would discourage lawyers from taking cases that were 50:50 or that they were doubtful that they would win.

On the whole issue of appeals, the direction in which we appear to be going still concerns me—we are squeezing appeal rights all the time. It is not encouraging to see a paper from the Department for Constitutional Affairs, issued just a few days ago, about its 2004 research programme, in which asylum was one of the areas in which it was asking for offers of research. It described the current system, and the proposals in the Bill, and went on to say:

"In the current Bill, the Government had originally proposed a judicial review ouster of IAT decisions. However, the ouster clause was replaced with the arrangement described above",

which are the arrangements that we now have. It continued:

"Both lay and expert views are sought on whether asylum seekers and immigrants should have the legal right to challenge Home Office decisions either to a Tribunal or a court."

If we are getting research done along those lines, I wonder what we will get next on changing appeal rights, on top of the proposals in the Bill.

The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration has moved significantly. All of us who argued about this section of the Bill tried to say on Second Reading that we could live with a single tier of appeal provided that there was a possibility of changing errors of law and provided that we were not removing the ability of people to go to the appeal courts and higher courts. I welcome the shift that has been made, and I look forward to seeing what we get back on the legal aid sections when we no doubt debate this again, either in a week or two or in the autumn, when the other place has had a chance to have another look at it.

 
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Mr. Heath: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard). As he said, many of us made trenchant criticisms of the Government's initial proposals when we last had the Bill before us. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) has already described the obscenity of the original proposals. The hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins), who was with us earlier, described the Bill as

"not only illiberal but grossly unfair".—[Official Report, 1 March 2004; Vol. 418, c. 721.]

Unfortunately—I say this is in the gentlest possible way—those two hon. Gentlemen could not quite bring themselves to vote against the Bill, as the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) and my hon. Friends did at the time. Nevertheless, clearly, a strong view was held on both sides of the House that there was a need to do something about the worst excesses of the original proposals.

If I welcome the proposals that the Government have now brought forward, I do so only because they are better than the alternative. The grudging way in which the Minister made his statements this evening suggested not so much a repentant sinner as someone who had been dragged kicking and screaming to the House, who had had to make changes because he knew that he would not get the Bill through the other place without them, and who was still not prepared to listen to what people were saying. Hence, we found that we needed further amendments from the other place to bring the Bill into conformity with what some of us felt had already been agreed.

I will not cover ground that has already been adequately covered by others, as other hon. Members wish to speak. I find it extraordinary, however, that the Government are fussing about the period of 10 working days, and trying to bring it down to five. For heaven's sake, we now have a simplified procedure. How many belts and braces do they need to achieve their objective? Adding another two days, as the hon. Member for Beaconsfield proposes, or leaving the period at 10 days, will make not a ha'p'orth of difference to the efficiency of the system, except in one way. If people are asked to present cases that are ill prepared—if they are asked to find legal assistance within a period that does not allow for that—cases in our courts will be dealt with less effectively, less efficiently and in a way that is less in the interests of justice.

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