Civil society rallies behind refugee charity at risk of closure

Finance | Tania Mason | 2 Jun 2010

Charities working in the refugee and asylum sector have warned the government that unless it stumps up the legal aid fees it owes to Refugee and Migrant Justice, the advocacy charity will have to close its doors, leaving 10,000 vulnerable people without a lawyer.

In a letter to the Justice and Home Secretaries, the charities have joined forces with faith leaders including the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams (pictured), and senior legal and human rights experts, to demand RMJ is paid the money it is owed.

RMJ says it needs to be paid £1.8m over the next six months to keep operating. The cost of closure to the taxpayers would be more than £2m.

The government set up Refugee and Migrant Justice in 1992 as a charity to help migrants and asylum seekers. Since then it has provided legal advice to over 110,000 people.

But recent changes to the way the government pays the charity for the work it does means that it cannot claim the legal aid fees it has incurred until the case has been through every stage of appeal – meaning RMJ sometimes has to wait months or even years to receive payment.

The new government recently told the charity that is has to stick to the current legal aid payment system because it underpins a procurement exercise started but not finished by the previous government.

This would lock in the current payment system, including the delayed payments, for a further three years and ringfence them from the new government review.

Those civil society chiefs that have rallied behind RMJ and signed the letter to the government include Liberty’s Shami Chakrabarti, Barnardo’s Martin Narey and Jan Shaw, Amnesty International’s UK refugee programme director. Altogether there are 17 signatories to the letter.

Who's Who: Tania Mason

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