On 16 June Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ), one of the largest legal aid providers in the UK for refugees and migrants, went into administration because of cashflow problems caused by a legal aid contracting regime which prevents us from billing our work in progress until the closure of cases.

Since RMJ went into administration, the Legal Services Commission has failed to engage with us, as solicitors, about securing the best interests of our thousands of clients; many of them children, all of them highly vulnerable.

Other willing firms have been told not to take on our clients until the LSC decides where they can go. We have been told simply to box up all clients’ files and the LSC will write our client care letters.

What kind of ‘care’ we ask? We have had every obstacle put in the way of maintaining our professional obligations to our clients and ensuring that their best interests are kept uppermost on an administrative timetable of impossible haste. RMJ is a high-quality legal aid supplier by all objective measures. Massive professional and public support bears this out and we are enormously grateful for our colleagues’ support, both practical and moral.

We are not being closed down on an intervention for improprieties or misconduct, but are being treated as if we were. The LSC, despite repeating its worn-out mantra that there is capacity in the system, has failed to show who will take on our clients and when, and to what standard. None of our clients has had any say in this process.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner have declined to take action to ensure that our clients are protected, and have revealed a major lacuna in regulatory functions. Our administrator has a singular purpose that cannot address the very real and pressing needs of our clients.

We have over 300 dedicated solicitors, legal officers, caseworkers and support staff who stand to lose their jobs, whose professional duties and code of ethics have been compromised and tested to the very limits by a dysfunctional agency; and a Ministry of Justice that talks about access to justice but, in reality, puts up higher and higher barriers to those most in need.

By the time this letter goes to press we will have been closed down, or by some miracle temporarily reprieved. Either way, much damage has been done and it is our clients who are being put most at risk and made to suffer for political reasons. This is nothing short of a national disgrace.

Amy Grey, Andrea Muckley, Anna Blackden, Augustine Machi, Baljeet Sandhu, Ben Croft, Djamilla Hitchins, Farin Anthony, Jo Swaney, Julia Gaunt, Kerrie Jopling, Libby Clarke, Nasreen Choudhry, Nicola Cockburn, Richard Bartram, Roopa Tanna, Shaila Pal, Steve Bravery, Zoe Veater, Syd Bolton (non-practising), Zofia Duszynska, Anne Lightfoot, Daniel Watson, Fay Mustapha, Frank Okungbowa, Vanessa Forson, Brian Pinsent, Harald Gardiner, Sheila Grewal, Valentine Rwegasira, RMJ solicitors (writing in a personal capacity)