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By Lord Avebury - 28th June 2010
Lord Avebury writes for ePolitix.com ahead of his oral question on the probable closure of Refugee and Migrant Justice.
Refugee and Migrant Justice has gone into administration, a catastrophe for its 10,000 clients including almost 900 children, and a major problem for the Legal Services Commission, which is supposed to find other providers to represent them. There has been no similar situation across the whole of criminal and civil legal aid in which a supplier of RMJ's size has closed. Many of its clients will be left stranded, particularly in the areas where RMJ is the sole provider, in which it is representing over 400 lone children.
The government had plenty of warning of the likelihood that RMJ would have to go into administration, but says other providers are managing perfectly well, ignoring the fact that charities such as the London Legal Support Trust have been assisting dozens of other agencies threatened with closure. The Law Centres Federation says that the average reserves of Law Centres have fallen by 70 per cent since the introduction of the new payments system in October 2007.
Under the Graduated Fee Scheme, the same amount is paid for a 'unit of work completed', varying from an hour's advice that doesn't resolve the case at one end of the scale, to the preparation of evidence and taking witness statements, frequently using interpreters, essential to the resolution of a complex asylum case.
Asylum specialists are penalised if, to achieve good results for their clients, they need to work more hours than are paid for under the GFS. There is no incentive for providers to improve their success rates by spending more time on their cases, because this would reduce their fee income.
The Legal Services Commission (LSC) sought to mitigate abuse by writing into the contract that if average fee income exceeds 80 per cent of the amount the provider would have received if the work had been charged at the hourly rate, they can be penalised; but the effect is to allow those undertaking the least work an extra 20 per cent income. A third of suppliers are actually breaching the 20 per cent rule, wasting large amounts of public money, to which the LSC is turning a blind eye.
RMJ was not asking for an increase in the fees, as secretary of state Kenneth Clarke seems to imagine, even though there is evidence that more time spent in preparation of a case at the application stage leads to overall cost savings. It was merely seeking prompt payment for work done. The LSC refused to consider a system of periodic billing because this would place 'a heavy burden on the LSC's and MoJ's cashflow' So it transferred this burden to providers, and especially to those undertaking complex asylum cases taking many months and, in some cases, years.
I don't believe other providers are capable of taking on the RMJ's many thousands of clients, or giving them the high standard of service delivered in the past by RMJ. Asylum-seekers can look forward to lower-quality representation, and the cost to the taxpayer will be huge, because the LSC will now have to pay the RMJ administrators for work done, and the new providers will receive full case fees for the clients they take on. Ways must be found to keep RMJ going.
Article Comments
The other thing that they have failed to consider is that the reasons for delay is actually another government department - the UK Border Agency. By improving efficiency in that department, they will make significant savings both in that department, and for the Ministry of Justice/LSC. The focus is on short term, headline grabbing savings, whilst the true costs of RMJ's demise will be passed on to the next government, through appeals, fresh claims etc.
The only way that the system will be improved will be the expansion of the Solihull pilot scheme, and additional training in the UKBA decision making process.
SM
30th Jun 2010 at 10:10 am
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