1. IAS is absolutely convinced that the proposed AIT re-hearings are totally unworkable if they are to be done pro bono. Representatives simply cannot be expected to prepare new witness statements, new expert evidence, new country bundles and attend court for, potentially, a full day if the funding is not in place to do so. The new regime will make proper preparation for re-hearings impossible, which will have the effect of making it less likely that funding will be granted, giving rise to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

2. IAS is a not-for-profit organisation and a charity. The proposals seem to assume that claimants’ representatives are making unmeritorious applications in order to profit from public funds and therefore that it is acceptable to impose an element of calculated commercial risk on the decision to appeal. IAS makes no profit, has no profit margin to gamble with and cannot take commercial risks. There is a very real danger that IAS will be unable to undertake AIT review work at all, therefore. We would be forced to gamble, literally, on losing some cases but winning enough other cases with enhanced costs to break even. This is entirely unacceptable and impractical. After over 30 years of publicly funded work before the Immigration Appeal Tribunal, it appears that we will be forced to withdraw from onward appeals work.

These two points are revisited below.

We have chosen virtually to ignore the questions posed in the consultation paper, which we consider to be largely irrelevant and superficial. The questions deliberately fail to address the real issues and in particular do not give any opportunity to comment on the above problems.

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IAS strongly objects to several of the underlying assumptions in the proposal. These assumptions need to be challenged because the proposed changes, in common with almost every single piece of primary or secondary legislation for the last decade in the field of immigration and asylum, will not have the universally desired effect of reducing delay and improving efficiency while maintaining standards of justice.