Immigration: Legal Aid Scheme

(asked on 6th December 2017) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of bringing non-asylum immigration claims for children back into scope of legal aid.


Answered by
Dominic Raab Portrait
Dominic Raab
This question was answered on 13th December 2017

The Government is committed to the protection of vulnerable children, especially in cases where children lack adequate parental support. Changes to the availability of legal aid for civil legal cases were made in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) and as such a consideration of the effects of the changes will be made as part of our Post-Implementation Review of the Act, which will report by summer recess 2018.

Support for children in non-asylum immigration cases remains available through the Exceptional Case Funding Scheme (ECF) where failure to provide legal aid would breach their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights or EU law, subject to means and merits tests.

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