The Children's Society is right to highlight the serious shortcomings of access to quality legal representation for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (see [2007] Gazette, 18 October, 3).


The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture works with many of these most vulnerable of children, and their experiences of the asylum process are invariably dismal and correspond with the findings of the Children's Society.



For Carolyn Regan to suggest there is no problem exposes an attitude of complacency that ignores the reality of these children's experiences and reveals her to be out of touch, even with her own policy advisors.



For at least two years, stakeholders have been meeting with her advisers at the Legal Services Commission (LSC) to discuss how to improve both the quality of and access to legally-aided advice for asylum-seeking children. We had hoped our meetings were progressing towards a constructive solution in addressing the need for more specialist knowledge of children's law among practitioners in this area.



Sadly, while the need has been clearly identified, the LSC seems to have deferred any meaningful action until the Home Office publishes its controversial children's reform programme plans.



These children need urgent action now and Ms Regan's comments do nothing to reassure us that the LSC has any commitment to pursue its own overdue reforms. There are some excellent asylum lawyers working with children, but they are few and far between. Those who have not closed due to restrictive LSC contract conditions are too often left unpicking the fundamental errors of other, non-specialist lawyers.



Too many children are left unrepresented at the door of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT) because their lawyers wrongly apply the merits test. Too often, the Home Office forces children through an adult-oriented process without any effective legal challenge from the child's representative.



If there is no problem, as Ms Regan seems to suggest, why is the AIT now conducting its own internal review of unrepresented child appellants?



Syd Bolton, solicitor, legal and policy officer (children), The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, London