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Home Secretary and Justice Secretary in High Court over refugee charity collapse 2

Finance | Tania Mason | 24 Jun 2010

Asylum-seeker clients of Refugee and Migrant Justice are taking the Justice and Home Secretaries to court to try to force the government to stump up close to £1m to cover the costs of transferring their legal cases to other lawyers.

The case opened in London’s High Court on Tuesday, with the charity’s clients seeking judicial review of the Legal Services Commission’s decision to terminate the charity’s contract and not provide sufficient funding to enable it to continue operating.  

They also say the Home Secretary should have undertaken not to reject any asylum applications or deport anyone until adequate alternative legal representation is secured.

And they request sufficient funds to cover the distribution of the outstanding cases to other lawyers.

Emergency appeal failed

The charity had been trying to raise last-minute funds from voluntary donations to plug the funding shortfall and rescue the organisation, but was unable to raise the amount needed.  Late yesterday it issued a statement saying it would return the funds raised to the donors and proceed with winding up. It had put itself into administration last week, claiming the new legal aid payment system made it impossible for it to survive.

The preliminary hearing this week sought to establish exactly what issues should be aired in the hearing proper next week.

Mr Justice Hickinbottom said: “The claimants’ position is simple...you challenge the LSC's decision to terminate the contract without making adequate provision for alternative representation for the clients of RMJ."

Martin Westgate QC, representing the claimants, said there was not enough alternative representation available and this could have a “seriously detrimental effect on very many clients”.

“It is not good enough to say to clients: ‘Here is a list of providers in your area’ when a number of them don’t provide immigration advice at all or don’t have the capacity to take on more cases,” he argued. “We say LSC should have addressed this before giving notice. It is their obligation to secure alternative arrangements.”

But the judge reminded Westgate that "a judicial review is not a public inquiry into how an authority acted. 

"It is not this court’s role to supervise the difficult tasks that the LSC has in ensuring that their statutory obligations are performed in relation to the nine or ten thousand people who were formally clients of RMJ.

“The answer to the provision of alternative services is not going to be: “Give RMJ £2m to keep it going” or ‘Give X £1m to take on the work’.  It’s going to be far more complex than that – it will be related to the individual needs of the clients.”

Westgate responded: “LSC has a duty to ensure continuing advice and we say there is evidence that is not being fulfilled. There are not enough solicitors to do the work. Unless problems of capacity are addressed, that duty is incapable of being fulfilled.”

Set out parameters of the case

Mr Paul Nicholls, representing the Justice Secretary, said the claimants had to establish the parameters of the case by setting out precisely what the defendants had done that is unlawful. “Issues need to be formulated so that evidence can be directed to that,” he said.

Mr Sheldon, representing the Home Office, said the Home Secretary was “troubled by her involvement in this case”, and wanted to know what public law duty she is alleged to have breached.

Justice Hickinbottom said: “It is obvious the placing of RMJ into administration has created challenges for all sorts of people.  But the court is not responsible for supervising how those challenges are met in practice. All it can do is look at the decisions made and determine whether they were unlawful.”

The judge gave the claimants until 9am this morning to prepare a document setting out exactly what it is they allege the defendants to have done wrong, and then gave all parties the weekend to prepare evidence backing up their case.  They will return to court for the hearing proper next Wednesday. The application for interim relief will be pursued then.

He also agreed to applications to intervene in the case from the Children’s Commissioner for England and the Immigration Law Practitioners Association.

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