MPs have demanded answers from home secretary Shabana Mahmood on where she will find a supply of lawyers to support her tough new stance on people claiming asylum and how those lawyers will be funded.

The former lord chancellor announced last week that she would reform the asylum appeals system ‘that sometimes seems designed to help frustrate a legitimate removal’ by ‘tackling a thicket of laws that have achieved the same end, both international and domestic’. A new appeals body would be created to boost capacity, with early legal advice ‘a core part of system reforms, avoiding delays and late claims, leading to better decisions’.

Concerned about the ramifications of Mahmood's announcement on her former department, the House of Commons justice select committee has written to the home secretary with 16 questions.

Read more

On the new appeals body, which would be staffed by ‘professionally trained adjudicators’, the committee wants to know if Mahmood intends to replace the first-tier tribunal, if the professional adjudicators will be judges, and why Mahmood has decided to create a new body rather than expand existing tribunal capacity. The committee also wants more detail on what the early legal representation will entail, how this will be funded and where the legal representatives will be drawn from.

The lady chief justice yesterday revealed that the judiciary was given just 24 hours' notice on the proposed reforms, with immigration judges given ‘little to no information’ about the future of their roles.

Mahmood was asked to reply by 9 December.