Asylum-seekers topple lawyers as cause of papers' ire

The National Audit Office (NAO) released its long awaited report into Community Legal Service expenditure this week, and what did most of the newspapers pick up on? Not the main finding - which, as reported in the Gazette last week (see [2002] Gazette, 28 November, 1) is that more than one-third of civil legal-aid firms are regularly over-charging in excess of 20% - but an issue even closer than lawyers to their own agenda, namely asylum seekers.

'Lawyers' scam runs up 138 million asylum bill' blasted the Daily Star (29 November).

The Express had the figure even higher - 'Legal aid for asylum hits 160 million', it claimed (November 28).

This was the predicted total for next year.

Although the report contained a mere paragraph about the cost of legal aid for asylum seekers, almost all the papers led with the story that 'massive overcharging by solicitors has sent the bill for giving legal advice to asylum seekers soaring...

to more than double the 58 million cost in 2000-2001' (Daily Star).

The Daily Mail, perhaps unsurprisingly, was most vehement in its condemnation of the 'asylum gravy train' (28 November).

Not content with saying that 'the cost of legal aid for asylum seekers has doubled in a year and is still soaring', it went on to reckon that 'the true cost of asylum cases may be higher still'.

The basis for this assumption is that 'these figures do not include the legal aid costs for asylum seekers who go beyond the tribunal system to the procedure of judicial review in the full-scale civil courts'.

Never one to miss a chance to have a dig at lawyers, the Mail threw in the claim that 'some immigration specialists have become notorious for touting for business among asylum seekers at ports and airports, and supplying them with false stories calculated to help win their claims for refugee status'.

The Sun was one of the only papers not to focus on 'whether lawyers are milking the system to encourage asylum seekers with totally unfounded claims to drag out applications' (The Times, 28 November).

Instead, it looked at 'people wrongly claiming legal aid,' including, in true Sun style, 'a couple who ran a profitable swingers' holiday business and a 200,000 bingo winner' (28 November).

Not that it did not have a pop at the profession.

'Rip-off lawyers cost us millions' was the headline.

The Financial Times also focused on the broader aspect rather than the immigration work.

'The Legal Services Commission must do more to tackle solicitors that charge the taxpayers too much,' it urged, highlighting that 'in the worst case, 700,000 had to be recovered from one firm of solicitors' (28 November).

All the papers, however, noted that overall civil legal aid spending has gone down.

On a lighter note, The Times took a look at the depiction of the law on television (26 November).

For years, the inaccuracies of fictional courtroom dramas have been the bane of many lawyers' lives.

'Why is it that almost every time a judge appears in a British television drama, he is shown wielding a gavel?' the paper asked.

'And how did Judge John Deed get away with sending a jury back to reconsider its verdict?'

The answer is, of course, that 'programme producers failed to take adequate legal advice'.

Lawyers are often called upon to advise writers and producers of drama, 'but not nearly often enough, to judge by the above slip-ups'.

Victoria MacCallum