Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs Written Evidence


Evidence submitted by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI)

  The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants is an independent, voluntary organisation working in the field of immigration, asylum and nationality law and policy. Established in 1967, JCWI actively lobbies and campaigns for changes in law and practice and its mission is to eliminate discrimination in this sphere. We are one of number of NGOs who have just been been warned we will be losing our contract for second tier specialist legal advice in July for reasons of the LSC's strategy.

  JCWI is a small national NGO comprising 16 members of staff, seven of whom constitute the legal casework team, including a casework director and two supervising members. Members of the team include a mixture of solicitors and barristers, and one individual who is a specialist in nationality and citizenship rules with some 30 years' experience of giving immigration advice—a quality of resource which is otherwise not readily available throughout the country. JCWI has invested considerable time and money in ensuring that its casework staff are accredited according to LSC requirements.

  Members of the team carry out legal casework, including strategic High Court challenges, participate on a rota basis in providing advice to detainees in Harmondsworth, and provide a telephone advice line to individual callers on immigration and asylum matters in addition to fulfilling the Legal Services Commission specialist advice and training contract.

  Our concerns are two-fold. Firstly we are advising practitioners in an area of law, immigration and asylum, which is increasingly complex given the rate of legislation and plethora of new rules in recent years. One effect may be that non-specialist legal advisers, particularly those working in isolated conditions in smaller legal firms and voluntary organisations, may not be able to continue offering advice in these areas of law if they cannot readily access the expertise and support of their specialist peers. Secondly, we are concerned that this will in turn impact on the ability of a generally vulnerable group, immigration and asylum applicants, to access high quality advice. We are concerned at the potential impact of this decision on those who, by nature of their migrant status, may run a greater risk of poverty, disadvantage and exclusion.

  During 2005, under its LSC contract the JCWI team provided advice during the course of 2,692 calls to advisors calling from 621 organisations. The vast majority of these calls—just under 84%—concerned immigration issues or appeals. The remainder concerned asylum issues or appeals. Most of the people who call us work in Citizen's Advice Bureaux, advise on a voluntary basis or are more inexperienced advisors. However we do get called by very experienced lawyers to discuss more complex questions. We receive calls from those who are specialists in other areas eg housing law, who represent clients that may have immigration issues. While the majority of calls come from traditional urban areas of migrant settlement, such as London, Birmingham and Manchester, JCWI is seeing more calls from areas of the new migration such as the West Country, Lincolnshire and Staffordshire.

  We would point out that the supply of legal services in some respects is a function of demand. In those places, which are not traditional migrant settlement areas, where there are not many people needing immigration advice, it is unlikely that there will exist suppliers with high levels of expertise in immigration and asylum law. The specialist support service provides a vehicle through which people living in areas of low supply and demand may still benefit from high quality specialist help.

  While we welcome the LSC's declaration that they would like to see more immigration applicants receiving face-to-face and holistic advice, we are not satisfied that this can be delivered to a high quality unless the non-specialist and voluntary advisors who ensure supply lower areas of demand are able to readily access second-tier specialist advice. We believe that removing the second-tier service may actually remove the incentives to non-specialists to practise in more complex areas of law such as immigration. We do not see how more face-to-face advice can be achieved both cost- effectively and to a high standard within current budgetary constraints without the second-tier, or "trickle down", structure. We also believe that the net effects of this will be to jeopardise the Government's strategies on social inclusion, integration and equalities.

Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI)

February 2006





 
previous page contents next page

House of Commons home page Parliament home page House of Lords home page search page enquiries index

© Parliamentary copyright 2006
Prepared 14 March 2006