Fear and posing

Some lawyers approached by the Gazette for this article did not want to comment on the record, for fear of putting themselves and colleagues at risk. That is perfectly understandable. Lawyers acting for refugees and asylum seekers have increasingly become the target of vitriolic abuse and even death threats, as successive governments fail to ‘stop the boats’ or ‘smash the gangs’.

The ‘hostile environment’, they note, is fuelling the perception that migrants are to blame for all manner of societal woes, from housing shortages to NHS waiting lists.

In 2020, home secretary Priti Patel deployed social media to accuse ‘activist lawyers’ of frustrating efforts to remove ‘migrants’. Four days later, a mentally troubled neo-Nazi went to the offices of immigration law firm Duncan Lewis with the intention of killing its solicitors because they helped immigrants. Cavan Medlock was deemed too mentally unwell to stand trial and sentenced to a hospital order.

Jacqueline McKenzie, head of immigration and asylum at Leigh Day, has direct experience of being personally targeted. In 2023, the Conservative party compiled a dossier briefing against her which was sent to select national media. It labelled McKenzie an ‘open borders activist’.

Threats, many sent to her work email, included rape and drowning. She was called a ‘n*****-lover’. Her home address was publicly circulated.

The Law Society and Bar Council responded with a joint statement expressing grave concern at the attacks.

Clients, McKenzie tells the Gazette, are ‘demonised’ by sections of the media, political organisations and commentators. In addition to general flag-waving, this has led to more serious consequences such as demonstrations outside asylum accommodation, riots, threats of violence and most recently the London demonstration led by far-right agitator Tommy Robinson (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon).

Muhunthan Paramesvaran, a partner at Wilsons, is chair of the Law Society’s immigration law committee. ‘The threat has got progressively worse and more vitriolic over the last few years,’ he says, ‘as successive home secretaries have attacked lawyers.’

Cross-party shame

The change of government to Labour, led by a prime minister who was a human rights barrister, has made little difference. Last month, Jo White, Labour MP for Bassetlaw and chair of the parliamentary party’s ‘Red Wall Caucus’, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that asylum solicitors are ‘ambulance-chasers’ and blamed them for the ‘broken’ appeal system.

‘I think for many solicitors it’s a licence to print money,’ White said. Her solution was for the government to make it as ‘unpleasant’ and ‘difficult’ as possible for people to claim asylum here.

Responding, Paramesvaran says: ‘Apart from contributing to a febrile atmosphere, they are completely wrong. Lawyers in this field largely work on legal aid rates that haven’t increased for 25 years and are barely enough to cover the cost of employing someone to do the work.

‘Lawyers have been subjected to death threats, vitriolic comments on social media and threatening letters for doing their job, representing some of the most vulnerable people in our community, complying with their professional obligations and acting in the best interests of their client within the confines of the law’.

The temperature rose markedly in July 2024 with the Southport stabbings. Three schoolgirls were murdered – a crime initially and wrongly blamed on an asylum seeker. Immigration lawyers were warned to take extra security measures, or stay away from work, amid far-right threats to their firms.

Lawyers’ groups warned that members were at risk after a list of 60 immigration advice centres was circulated via messaging app Telegram, with the suggestion that they should be the target of protests.

Judges are also in the line of fire, including from senior politicians. In February, Starmer and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch heavily criticised a judgment in a case concerning a Palestinian family who had applied for asylum using the wrong form.

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick MP, meanwhile, a former City solicitor, has singled out immigration judges for criticism on social media, declaring that judges are ‘too political’ and their decisions could ‘undermine public confidence’.

Following the Court of Appeal’s ruling on asylum seekers being housed at the Bell Hotel in Epping, Lord Justice Bean became the latest target.

And while not directly criticising the lawyers or judges involved, Shabana Mahmood MP – barrister, former justice secretary and now home secretary, laid into ‘vexatious, last-minute claims’ when a High Court decision delayed the deportation of an Eritrean man under the ‘one in, one out’ deal agreed with France. Such claims ‘make a mockery of our laws and this country’s generosity’, she claimed.

A Law Society spokesperson stresses: ‘Immigration solicitors are currently facing very real and tangible threats to their lives and safety – they are targeted because of the work they do.’ Politicians ‘want to pin the blame’ on lawyers and judges, he added, which ‘needs to stop’.

Zoe Bantleman, legal director of the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, says: ‘Immigration and asylum law has become sensationalised and distorted, exposing individuals, those who represent them, and those who decide on their appeals to unnecessary and unacceptable threats and danger’.

Bantleman wants the government to ‘educate and inform society as a whole of the importance and value of upholding the rule of law’. That also means telling the public the truth that ‘people have a legal right to seek asylum from persecution’.

Channel crossing

More than 30,000 people have crossed the English Channel in small boats since the start of the year – the highest numbers coming from Afghanistan, Eritrea and Iran. Deterring small boat arrivals by removing the ability to claim asylum in the UK was a key focus of the Conservative government – both through its failed scheme to send individuals to Rwanda and the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which removed the right of those arriving ‘illegally’ to stay or claim asylum.

Labour began in government by stating it would repeal the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 and much of the Illegal Migration Act 2023. That will be achieved in the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (see box), which also hands more powers to law enforcement agencies to ‘smash the gangs’ facilitating Channel crossings.

Nevertheless, some lawyers accuse the party of ‘lurching to the right’ on immigration as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK rises in the polls. Appointed home secretary in the recent Cabinet reshuffle, Mahmood has pledged to go ‘further and faster’ on tackling small boat arrivals. She is expected to take a tougher line on immigration than predecessor Yvette Cooper.

Many lawyers doubt that the ‘one in, one out’ scheme brokered by Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron will deter arrivals. More than 100 small boat migrants have been detained pending removal to France, but some predict that larger numbers are likely to arrive in the UK despite the treaty agreed in August.

Decisions and backlogs

More widely, most agree with a briefing from lawyer-run website Free Movement that the asylum system is ‘broken’ and that it was ‘the Conservative government that broke it’. The system has been ‘overwhelmed’ – not by new arrivals, but by ‘mismanagement’.

Latest Home Office figures show that the number of cases in the asylum system increased more than fourfold in the decade to June 2024, to 224,742. By the end of last year, some 91,000 cases were awaiting an initial decision. This was 31% lower than the peak reached in 2022, but there was an additional appeals backlog of 42,000.

By June 2025, more than 19,000 people had been waiting longer than a year for an initial decision. These delays, says Diana Baxter, a partner at Wesley Gryk, leave clients and their families in limbo, which can have a detrimental effect on their mental and physical wellbeing.

At their annual conference in Bournemouth last weekend, the Liberal Democrats branded the asylum backlogs a ‘national emergency’. The party has called for ‘Nightingale processing centres’ to clear the lists in six months and reduce the use of hotels.

Liz Barratt , head of immigration and asylum law at Bindmans, argues that ministers’ focus on detention and removal addresses the problem ‘from the wrong end’. The government should instead target resources at reducing the backlog of cases by increasing the quality and speed of initial decisions by Home Office staff – thereby reducing the number of appeals, she says.

Since Labour came to power, initial decisions have been made more quickly. But some lawyers say the emphasis on speed has come at the cost of accuracy and quality, shifting the problem to the tribunal system.

In 2024, 47% of applicants were granted asylum at the initial decision stage. Three-quarters of those rejected lodged an appeal, of which 33% were successful. This suggests many appeals would not have been necessary if the initial decision had been properly reached.

The biggest problem, says McKenzie, is the lack of highly skilled people making asylum decisions. ‘Very often, the decisions are a cut-and-paste job with an inadequate application of the evidence. Sometimes they even get the countries wrong and very often the facts are wrong,’ she says.

Home Office data shows the poor quality of its decision-making. In 2023/24, only 52% of decisions reviewed passed the department’s own quality test.

Jawaid Luqmani, a founding partner of north London immigration and asylum-focused law firm Luqmani Thompson, suggests that sensible concessions rather than spurious appeals, and allowing applications from countries with a 90% or above success rate (subject to criminal checks), would speed cases up by months and save money on hotels.

The delays, notes Barratt, are also exacerbated by a shortage of legal aid lawyers arising from low rates of pay, which leaves applicants unrepresented.

The government plans to overhaul the asylum appeals system, replacing tribunal judges with ‘independent adjudicators’. Details are scant, but Luqmani describes the change as ‘semantic’. There will still need to be a system to appeal adjudicators’ decisions, he suggests – otherwise the High Court will be ‘bombarded’ with judicial reviews.

Ministers have also argued that refugees can come via safe and legal routes, but these presently exist only for those coming from Ukraine or Hong Kong. In 2023, 102,283 people were offered a safe and legal (humanitarian) route to come to, or remain in, the UK. Almost half were on Ukraine schemes.

By suspending the family reunion scheme that allowed relatives to join refugees, Paramesvaran notes that ministers have also closed a legal route, adding to the number of people prepared to attempt a small-boat crossing.

Ministers have also mooted the idea of suspending commitments entered into under the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into British law by the Human Rights Act 1998. Yet lawyers argue this will do nothing to prevent people from attempting to come here, or help deal with those already on our shores. Applicants would still have common law rights to sanctuary, too.

Attorney general Lord Hermer suggests it is a ‘political trick’ to pretend that any meaningful changes to the ECHR could be achieved in time to ‘make a difference’. Even so, Mahmood is expected to publish an asylum white paper setting out how the government intends to tighten the way judges interpret the convention in British courts.

First and foremost, lawyers stress that the government must be honest about the facts. ‘We get hardly anyone coming to the UK [seeking asylum] compared to the rest of the world, and the majority of people coming here arrive with student or work visas,’ stresses McKenzie.

‘There are 120 million people displaced around the world,’ she adds, with most going to poorer countries. ‘We are supposed to be the fifth-richest country in the world, but we can’t accommodate a small number of asylum seekers a year? Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, has taken in over one million Rohingya.’

Most asylum seekers coming to the UK will be permitted to stay, but while their claims are assessed, they are not allowed to work and they receive just £9.95 a week (if meals are provided at their allotted accommodation). Allowing them to work or study would save taxpayer money and benefit those seeking refuge here, says Baxter.

S Chelvan, a barrister at 33 Bedford Row, advocates repealing section 40 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which makes it a criminal offence to arrive in the UK without a valid entry clearance. ‘We need to burst the balloon of hate and fear that has been created by labelling asylum applicants as illegal and criminal’, and ‘go back to our understanding and acceptance that it is not illegal to claim asylum.’

Ultimately, says Barratt: ‘This is a global issue that requires a global solution. There are people in crisis and on the move all over the world, and with global warming, it will only get worse.’

Catherine Baksi is a freelance journalist