By Catrin Nye and Leo Sands
Asylum seekers are facing a “lottery” depending on where their appeal is heard, research by the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme has found.
Appeals are twice as likely to be successful at some centres compared with others, data obtained through a Freedom of Information request found.
Shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti called for an urgent investigation into the findings.
The Ministry of Justice is yet to respond to a request for a comment.
One immigration case worker said the situation was so severe that they had heard of cases where lawyers had lied about the address of their client to get their case heard at a different location.
The data concerns 36,000 ordinary asylum appeals from January 2013 to September 2016.
The disparity is illustrated by comparing two busy London centres – at Harmondsworth 24% of appeals were successful while at Taylor House it was 47%.
Success rates for asylum appeals 2013-17.
Tribunal Success rate Cases heard
Belfast 24% 292
Birmingham 34% 4,177
Bradford 41% 2,903
Glasgow 28% 1,979
Harmondsworth 24% 1,196
Hatton Cross 40% 6,414
Hendon 39% 72
Manchester 34% 4,428
Newport 44% 3,083
North Shields 30% 1,848
Nottingham 39% 140
Richmond 43% 299
Stoke 36% 1,923
Taylor House 47% 7,488
Yarl’s Wood 21% 125
The figures exclude appeals that concluded as fast-track cases.
Access to good quality legal representation in certain parts of the country and a different “culture” at hearing centres were repeatedly cited as reasons, during the research.
‘Legal aid deserts’
Shami Chakrabarti says “legal aid deserts” are failing asylum seekers.
Two centres with a very low number of successful appeals, Harmondsworth and Yarl’s Wood, were also the tribunals that had heard the highest proportion of cases in which the asylum seeker had no legal representation at all in the same period, a further Freedom of Information request found.
Some 32% of cases heard at Harmondsworth featured unrepresented asylum seekers, 23% at Yarl’s Wood.
“There are what has become known as legal-aid deserts,” said Catriona Jarvis, a retired judge who sat at tribunals across the country for 12 years.”
“It’s wholly wrong. It shouldn’t be a lottery.”
Cuts to government legal aid since 2013 have reduced the financial incentive for immigration lawyers to take on time-consuming asylum appeals.”
“These are areas of the country where there are no firms of solicitors who are providing immigration asylum law services,” Mrs Jarvis said.
“That becomes incredibly problematic for asylum seekers who have been sent to live in those parts of the country.”
Baroness Chakrabarti described the variations as “very upsetting” and said they could not be due to coincidence or weak cases.
She said: “Legal-aid deserts for people in different parts of the country means people are going into asylum appeals unrepresented.
“That’s completely unacceptable in a humane democracy.”
A spokesman for the judiciary said all judges considered each case individually based on the relevant facts and the law.
The statement said: “First-tier tribunal immigration judges are deployed across the various hearing centres and do not sit solely in any single one, so it is difficult draw any inferences from the available statistics.
“Ultimately, independent judicial decisions are reviewable on appeal if either side is dissatisfied with the outcome.
Fountain Solicitors offers a wide range of legal services, including Immigration, Marriage Visas, Students, Business Visas, Tier 2, Entrepreneurs, Asylum and Human Rights Law, Family Law, Employment Law, National
Security Law, Criminal Law, Public
Law, Personal Injury, Power of Attorneys, Affidavits and Wills. For full details email info@fountainsolicitors.com or telephone 01922 645 429 or visit our website www.fountainsolicitors.com
