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Asylum Aid is delighted to launch a pilot programme of training, supervision and peer support for immigration advisers working in advice deserts across England and Wales. The pilot, kindly funded by the Justice Together Initiative, will increase access to high-quality and holistic immigration legal advice for people seeking asylum, refugees and other vulnerable people in the immigration system.

The Migrants’ Law Project is a legal and public legal educational project. It works to enforce, advance and defend the legal rights of people seeking asylum and others with insecure legal status through securing substantive changes in policy and practice. The MLP joined Asylum Aid in 2023 from its previous home at Islington Law Centre. We joined forces because we know that there is a severe lack of access to quality legal support for vulnerable people with insecure legal status in the UK.

This Government, through the ‘Illegal Migration Bill’, seeks to strip those fleeing war, persecution and human rights abuses of their right to seek safety in this country. It seeks to destroy long held principles of fairness in our justice system – that of access to the courts and equality before the law. The Helen Bamber Foundation and Asylum Aid will resist the passing and implementation of this Bill with all the means at our disposal.

We are delighted to have been selected by the Justice Together Initiative as a grantee partner to deliver a 3-year pilot of a programme of training, supervision and peer support to immigration advisers working in advice deserts across England and Wales. We believe this programme can function as a pilot that demonstrates the long-term value and cost-effectiveness of investing in training a sustainable pipeline of expert immigration advisers who are well-networked, supported to provide advice in complex cases and who are prepared to train and support new advisers moving into the field.

Asylum Aid is partnering with the Justice Together Initiative to provide in depth training for IAA Level 2 advisers who want to deliver complex casework at IAA Level 2 and 3, particularly in complex asylum, human rights and trafficking cases. We are seeking expressions of interest from organisations who want to support their IAA advisers to gain increased confidence and expertise in working in more complex asylum, human rights and trafficking cases.

Our challenge to the Home Office’s Rwanda policy was heard in the High Court on 13 and 14 October. This followed earlier hearings on 5-9 September of the cases brought by Care4Calais, Detention Action, the PCSU and a number of individuals, and a hearing on 12 October of a case focused on the data sharing parts of the Rwanda agreement. At the hearing, our barristers presented the evidence and legal arguments to support our case that the Home Office has adopted a procedure for sending people to Rwanda which is unlawful and unfair.

2021 was a year of consolidation for the Asylum Aid team following its re-establishment as a charity in its own right as part of the Helen Bamber Foundation group in August 2020. The focus of the charity’s work remained on providing expert legal representation in the most complex cases going through the asylum and trafficking systems. The ongoing public health crisis as a result of the coronavirus pandemic continued to pose challenges both for the delivery of our services and for our clients, where ongoing delays in decision-making by the Home Office resulted in increased vulnerability to exploitation, abuse and re-trafficking.

We have applied for an urgent interim injunction to stop the government flying refugees to Rwanda until our application for judicial review can be heard. The interim injunction application was made today on the charity’s behalf by law firm Leigh Day. The injunction seeks to prevent any flights taking place, including the one scheduled on Tuesday 14 June 2022, until an application for judicial review of the procedures and arrangements in place to send refugees to Rwanda can be heard by the court.

The government is seeking to introduce a Bill of Rights that would significantly reduce the protections afforded to certain groups, including refugees and survivors of trafficking. The government’s proposals will not only harm the most marginalised but will undermine the human rights protections available to us all.

Asylum Aid's Statelessness Pro Bono partnership with a network of 12 global law firms has been recognised by the LawWorks Annual Pro Bono Awards under the category of Most Effective Pro Bono Partnership. The partnership has been running since 2018 and consists of a large-scale collaborative pro bono project tackling the complex issue of statelessness in the UK. Asylum Aid's legal team works closely with lawyers across the 12 firms, to train, share experiences and suggestions to ensure each application is successful.