Every six months for the last three years BID has carried out a survey of legal representation across the UK detention estate. We ask detainees whether they have a solicitor at the time we speak to them, how they found that solicitor, whether they pay fees for advice or have legal aid, and what work their solicitor has done for them.
How long did they have to wait to see a legal aid solicitor at the surgery in their IRC? Have they had to change solcitors after being transferred or moving into or out of the Scottish legal system? We also ask people whether they have come to an IRC from prison, and if so whether they got any immigration advice while in prison.
A summary of the key quantitative findings of all eight surveys conducted by BID from 2010-2014 can be downloaded at the end of the page.
In June this year (2013) for the first time we sent this survey to all our clients who are detained in the prison estate, where of course there is no provison of immigration legal advice surgeries by the Legal Aid Agency, the Home Office, or HM Prison Service. These findings will be published shortly.
Key findings from May - June 2013
Going down
43% of detainees we spoke to had a legal representative (79% had a legal representative just six months earlier)
Going up
69% of respondents had waited for more than one week for a legal surgery appointment. Of these 38% waited (or had waited to date) for two weeks before seeing a lawyer, 21% had waited for 3 weeks (or 3 weeks to date), and 8% for 4 weeks or more. The proportion of those facing a delay before seeing a lawyer for the first time keeps rising.
26% of detainees who took part in the survey had never had a lawyer while they had been detained.
