Immigration solicitors are outraged this week over plans to set up a salaried service for asylum work, amid concerns that its lawyers could be placed in the position of putting the aims of the government before the best interests of their clients.

A Birmingham-based office, to open this autumn, will see the Legal Services Commission (LSC) directly employ six staff with a view to finding out what the costs and quality drivers are in asylum legal aid and meeting advice needs in surrounding areas through outreach services.


The Immigration Law Practitioners Association said the pilot could complicate further the already-sensitive relationship between the government, the LSC and the immigration advice sector. Executive committee member Chris Randall warned that the LSC would have to tread carefully if the project was to have any credibility. 'Given current levels of concern about the political interference with publicly funded provision within the field, there will need to be a high degree of transparency in the establishment and running of this service,' he said.


Both the Law Society and the Legal Aid Practitioners Group said they did not object to the project in principle if it were monitored robustly, but doubted that it could provide better value for money than private practice.


But Mark Phillips, partner at Birmingham firm Tyndallwoods and immigration spokesman for Birmingham Law Society, said the government's agenda was to set up a system where lawyers would not 'bite the hand that feeds them' by challenging its asylum decisions.


Mr Phillips also predicted that the office was the 'thin end of the wedge', as the set-up costs would be too high if it served as a stand-alone project. 'The logic of this makes no sense unless it is meant to be a prototype for a way of delivering services that will be expanded,' he said.


LSC immigration head Crispin Passmore denied that either of those two scenarios was the case. He told the Gazette that the office would provide value for money by providing valuable information about the way immigration practices worked, and insisted that there were currently no plans to roll it out. 'The idea that we can find lawyers who will act in the government's interests and not in the clients' is wrong,' he insisted. '[The recruits] would not let us; we are looking for experienced practitioners and that is not our intention anyway.'