Foreigners will be banned from claiming free legal representation in civil cases until they have lived in Britain for at least one year, the justice minister revealed Sunday.
The crackdown on immigrants’ rights is among the changes to be announced by ministers this week to cut the £1.7 billion (Dh9.50 billion) legal aid bill by approximately £300 million.
It will hit illegal immigrants, failed asylum seekers and even those on tourist or student visas who have taken advantage of the lax rules or lack of checks on their status.
Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, said the measures would be “difficult but sensible”.
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph he said: “It’s not about denying people access to justice it’s about achieving the right balance for what you can afford.”
Grayling is to take an axe to criminal legal aid in an effort to limit large taxpayer-funded payments to lawyers. Some leading QCs can receive as much as £500,000 a year from the government for defending suspects.
The Justice Secretary said nobody whose earnings came from the public sector “should reasonably expect” to earn more than the Prime Minister, who is paid £142,000 a year. Under the range of new measures, prisoners are to be banned from using legal aid for cases that do not relate to the length of their sentences. “I am proposing to take legal aid away from prisoners who don’t like the prison they are in, or don’t like the cell they are in, or don’t like a part of the regime,” Grayling said.
In a separate move — with ministers determined to take a tough line on offending — Grayling disclosed that he is planning a change in court guidelines after a criminal convicted of attacking three people had his curfew lifted so that he could go on holiday to Thailand. In a letter to magistrates, Grayling said he had ordered his officials to “review” rules that had allowed Nathaniel McIntosh, 23, to apply to get his curfew lifted to go on a pre-booked month-long trip.
He had been convicted at Bodmin magistrates’ court of a “sustained attack” which included kicking and punching three victims. He received a 12-week suspended prison sentence and an eight-week curfew from 7pm to 6am. Mr Grayling’s letter warns of the need to “take steps to prevent things like this from happening in the future” and adds: “I do not believe that the public can have confidence in a system where an offender can delay a penalty in order to go on holiday.”
The residency test for foreign migrants claiming civil legal aid comes after a promise by David Cameron to make Britain the “toughest” country on benefits for them. Ministers will hold a consultation on a proposal to ensure that, in future, new arrivals will not be able to receive legal aid in cases that involve benefits, housing or relationship breakdowns.
A senior Coalition source said: “At a time when we have had to make difficult decisions about legal aid to ensure that taxpayers can have confidence in how we spend their money, we believe that in future, civil legal aid should be limited to those who have a strong connection to this country.”
There are currently no nationality or residence restrictions on civil legal aid. Ministers plan to make it a requirement for solicitors to see documentary evidence of at least 12-month residency before taking on cases. There will be some exceptions, including serving members of the Armed Forces and their families, and asylum seekers.
The move comes ahead of the expected arrival of tens of thousands of Romanian and Bulgarian workers who will be allowed to come to Britain from next year after European Union restrictions are lifted. Ministers have refused to put a figure on the number who are expected to come.
A report by MigrationWatch, a think tank, predicts that 250,000 could arrive by 2019. Grayling said: “There are a number of areas where somebody who comes to this country even on a tourist visa can access civil legal aid. We are going to change that.
“There have been examples of people who have come to the country for extraordinarily short periods of time who have had a relationship breakdown and then they end up in our courts at our expense to determine custody of the children.
“This will exclude people who enter the country illegally, who up to now have been able to access our legal aid system in a way I don’t think should ever have happened.”
Despite a previous crackdown on civil legal aid by Kenneth Clarke, who preceded Mr Grayling as justice secretary, Britain’s overall legal aid bill, at £1.7 billion a year, remains high. France, in contrast, spends pounds £400 million. [DailyTelegraph]