March 2021

The Public Accounts Committee has today published a report “Key Challenges Facing the Ministry of Justice”, produced in response to the unprecedented pressures on the justice system which have been compounded by COVID-19. The report highlights the: “significant risks” that the Ministry of Justice faces across the full range of its services and the impact of “huge backlogs” on access to justice. In a statement about the report Meg Hillier MP, PAC Chair, concluded “Our justice system is besieged on all sides and it is not clear the MoJ has a firm grip on this challenge even with a desperately needed funding boost.” The Public Accounts Committee’s report calls on MoJ to act urgently to improve the data that is collected on court users and justice outcomes, echoing concerns raised by TLEF in our report on the impact of Covid-19 on court users that: “the Ministry is overly relying on the potential of technology to manage the increased demand in the court system, without yet having a clear understanding of how the rapid expansion of remote justice impacts on court users or justice outcomes”. The Committee further criticises the lack of tangible progress in implementing the recommendations of the Foundation’s 2019 Digital Justice Report and calls on the MoJ to set out, in its Treasury Minute response, its plans to implement the recommendations in that report. TLEF Director of Research Dr Natalie Byrom says: “This report from the Public Accounts Committee provides striking and welcome recognition of the vital importance of investing in data and implementing the recommendations of the Foundation’s 2019 Digital Justice report. Data is not a “nice to have”, it is essential to run an effective, fair and efficient justice system. COVID-19 makes work to tackle systemic deficiencies in the data held by HMCTS more crucial, not less. As the Committee rightly states, without data it is impossible to understand which interventions are most successful in tackling the backlog. Urgent action to improve the data that HMCTS collects in line with the recommendations they have agreed to from our Digital Justice Report is required. HMCTS now needs to receive the dedicated, ring-fenced funding required to implement our recommendations. Without this, the MoJ will be unable to grip the challenges facing the justice system and provide justice for victims, offenders and taxpayers”

About the Digital Justice Report

On 2 October 2019, The Legal Education Foundation (TLEF) published ‘Digital Justice: HMCTS data strategy and delivering access to justice’ following a three month secondment by its Director of Research, Dr Natalie Byrom, into HMCTS as an expert adviser on open data. The Report set out a blueprint of 29 recommendations for evaluating the impact of the government’s court reform programme, and for ensuring the needs of all court users are understood and fully met in the move to digital justice. If the report is adopted in full, the UK could become a world leader in delivering digital justice for all. On 9 October 2020, HMCTS published a response to this report, accepting in principle the overwhelming majority of its recommendations.

The Legal Education Foundation has responded to the Independent Human Rights Act Review (IHRAR) which is specifically concerned whether the Human Rights Act 1998 strikes the correct balance between the roles of the courts, the Government and Parliament and whether the current approach risks domestic courts being unduly drawn into questions of policy. The Foundation’s view is that there is no evidence to suggest that there is an imbalance between the roles of the courts, the Government and Parliament, nor do we see any evidence that domestic courts are being drawn ‘unduly’ into questions of policy. Furthermore, there are compelling reasons why the current approach to human rights accountability should be retained, namely that the Human Rights Act 1998 has greatly benefited a vast number of people from across society, improving their health and wellbeing, ensuring their dignity, autonomy, privacy, family life and overall improving their quality of life. Our full response can be read here: TLEF response to IHRAR Mar 2021.

Rupen Shah has joined The Legal Education Foundation board as a Governor and will join TLEF’s Audit Committee. Rupen qualified as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG and is currently the Chief Financial Officer of The Football Foundation and a Trustee of Women in Sport. Matthew Smerdon, TLEF CEO, says: ‘We are delighted Rupen is joining us, bringing substantial expertise in charity and commercial finance, a knowledge of grant-making organisations, and a clear passion for social justice and tackling inequalities. He has a deep commitment to law and its power to solve everyday problems as well as extensive board experience and is going to bring a lot to the foundation.’ Rupen says: ”I am delighted to be joining the Board of TLEF. As a relatively young organisation, it’s remarkable to see its appetite to improve lives and transform communities through the power of legal education. I’m really looking forward to working with the Board and Executive Team to help TLEF achieve its ambitions and more!”

Denise McDowell tells Fiona Bawdon that after the initial shock of the pandemic, it was GMIAU's long history of surviving different crises that helped it weather the unique challenges of Covid-19

In February this year, Denise McDowell came across the strategic plan she had written in early 2020 for the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit, the organisation where she has been director since 2008 With remarkable prescience, the plan included mention of coronavirus - and Denise had stated confidently that GMIAU was aware of the threat and well prepared to cope, as its office had hot water and was stocked up with soap and paper towels (this was at the stage when official advice was that thorough handwashing would be enough to stop the spread). A year on, it's clear how ill prepared GMIAU along with the rest of the world actually was for the havoc the virus would wreak. Denise says there were times in the earliest days when she thought the enormity of the challenge would prove too much. 'We knew that it was a crisis situation, but we knew we didn't really understand it. We knew we were going to shut the door to our building; that we would have to work from home. But it felt like something bigger and different from anything we had experienced before,' she says. Everything stopped - the courts; Home Office decision-making. That meant, at a stroke, GMIAU lost the 50% of its income it derived from legal aid. 'In an instant, that was cut. It felt really daunting.' Another challenge was that, since its foundation 30 years ago, GMIAU has been a location-based service, where clients are seen face to face, and staff work in the office five days a week, rather than remotely from home. Along with every other not-for-profit legal advice agency, GMIAU has had its share of funding crises over the years, but she feared this one as unsurvivable. 'There was a point when it just felt completely and utterly overwhelming. I thought, is this how it ends?' Ultimately, it was this difficult history which equipped Denise and her colleagues to weather the unprecedented Covid-19 storm. 'We have had to cope with lots of challenges over the years, so one thing we know about ourselves is we are adaptable. We don't give up. We are very resilient to have coped with what we have had to cope with over the last 10 years.' To begin with staff had to use their personal mobile phones; doing interviews by Facetime. None of them had heard of Zoom. There were some tears of frustration over dodgy internet connections, but no one blinked. Denise says: 'Everyone stepped up. Nothing was too difficult.' In two weeks, GMIAU went from a standing start to operating almost much at full strength. Denise quickly recognised the impact the crisis would have on GMIAU clients - particularly those who were already isolated, newly arrived in the UK, or with existing health conditions. Even in normal times, the immigration system increases vulnerability, by taking away rights to accommodation or the ability to feed a family; adding the pandemic to the mix was an alarming prospect. Staff began contacting clients to reassure them: 'We are still here. This is how you contact me.' GMIAU's main phone number became an emergency Covid-19 line, where callers could get advice, and be helped through the process. There were calls from people who pre-pandemic had been working and managing fine. Denise remembers a call she took from a mother who'd been plunged into crisis after losing her job. Like so many other migrants, she was blocked by the Home Office from having recourse to public funds. Denise recalls the woman saying: 'I have nothing now. I have no savings because I've never earned enough to save. I have no food in my cupboards. Friends are helping, but it's a horrible situation.' The caller rejected Denise's suggestion of approaching social services for emergency support (saying: 'I have tried that before. I never want to go through that humiliation again'), but was then directed to the Home Office's 'change of conditions' process, so she could apply to have her NRPF condition lifted, to be given access to the welfare safety net. The daily calls it was receiving gave GMIAU vital intelligence about what information people needed, leading to a series of bulletins on its website, covering topics like: applying for a Home Office fee waiver; updates on what was happening in the courts and Home Office; and, how do you claim asylum in the midst of a pandemic. Early support from funders, including the Community Justice Fund - of which TLEF is a partner - was critical. Denise recalls: 'Funders told us, "we understand this is an unprecedented situation. We are listening. We want to know what you need." That's what made me sleep at night. It felt like solidarity. That we really were in this together.' CJF funding 'allowed me to get on with what needed to be done, without worrying whether I was going to have to make people redundant,' she adds. Manchester is one of the areas hardest hit by the pandemic, and has been subject to some of the harshest lockdown conditions throughout. Despite this, thanks to GMIAU's team spirt and flexibility from funders, Denise says: ' We have come to the end of this financial year and we are absolutely fine. That didn't seem possible a year ago, and it fills me with hope for next year.' The legacy of the pandemic may even be in part be positive for future GMIAU clients. Denise says there will no longer be a presumption they will attend the office for appointments. 'We've realised we can save people bus fares. For people claiming asylum, the north west is a big dispersal area and they are being accommodated further and further away from their legal representatives.' One surprise has been how many clients have smartphones and how adept they are at using them (and locating free wifi). Denise says: 'A phone is a vital asset. Many would rather go without food than without their phone. It is their lifeline - how they keep in touch with family back home, what they use for translation.' Even clients who lack the skills themselves are resourceful enough to get the help they need: one colleague found herself talking to a Tesco security guard, after a client sought his help to send a picture of a Home Office letter. As we reach the anniversary of the start of lockdown, Denise reflects that the pandemic she feared might end GMIAU has actually revealed its strengths. 'The last year has shown that the core of the organisation works. It isn't about a building. It is based on communication. Even though the pandemic is not over, there's a sense we understand it now. It's familiar to us and we have the people who will work together to ensure the fabric of what we have will survive next year as well.'

Access Social Care CEO Kari Gerstheimer tells Fiona Bawdon how the pandemic has made her organisation's work both more urgent and more difficult

The launch of Access Social Care in April 2020, could hardly have been more timely. This charity, offering specialist social care legal advice, opened its (virtual) doors in the midst of the first wave of Covid-19, just when the entire country was focused on what was happening in care homes across the UK. The Corona Virus Act 2020 enabled local authorities to suspend many of the usual duties placed on them by the Care Act; and care providers of all kinds were facing unimaginable pressure. Kari says: 'People were dying. Carers were desperately trying to keep people alive, while working in a fast-changing environment. New regulations were being issued at pace, which were having a dramatic impact on our clients' businesses.' Although it was launched as an independent charity last year, Access Social Care started life in 2018 as a project at Mencap, the learning disability charity. It operates a membership model, where care providers pay a fee to access its expert legal support; another key part of its mandate is to build the case for a properly funded national social care scheme. Kari says that although it is older people who attract most public and political attention in relation to social care provision (or its lack), 50% of the current government spend is on those of working age; and 70% of that 50% are learning disabled people. Even without Covid-19, the growth in demand for social care was outstripping spending, leading local authorities to ration provision unlawfully. 'Delay can be a very effective way of managing the budget,' says Kari. Since the pandemic, significant additional challenges have been added to the social care mix. 'We've seen DNAR [do not attempt resuscitation] orders being placed on people with learning disabilities, without consulting them, or their family. We have seen new regulations being issued at pace, which have a dramatic impact on our clients' businesses. Without the usual checks and balances, we have seen shocking decisions made at speed, ' says Kari Gerstheimer. For many advice organisations, the last year has meant an abrupt move away from face to face working towards remote service delivery. For Access Social Care, it meant 'the rest of the world has shifted to our way of working,' says Kari. It was always the plan that ASC's team would work remotely, pandemic or no pandemic, but the impact of Covid-19 has been to transform what might have been seen an unusual model of working into the default. Kari says: 'We are a very, very flexible employer, so the shift to a flexible working pattern has not been a challenge for us.' With funding provided by TLEF, via the Law Centres Network, ASC was equipped from the outset with the IT to enable remote working and advice delivery. Even so, productivity has declined, not least as a result of the impact of schools closing on its mainly women staff team. 'Everyone knows you can't work with two children sitting on your lap,' says Kari. 'We can't keep expecting people to deliver at the same pace.' ASC's pragmatic response was to go through every element of its work, and identify what could be halted or postponed. Kari says: 'That was really hard, personally. I work at pace. We had so much momentum and achieved so much in our first year, then to hit the brakes really goes against the grain.' In January, ASC introduced a wide-ranging wellbeing programme offering everything from mindfulness to online social events to zumba; and it also operates a buddy system for staff. Despite growing demand for its services and a successful first year, there are some potential clouds on the horizon. Pro bono support and donations are a key part of its business model, but the corporate legal sector, along with everyone else, has been knocked off kilter by the pandemic. ASC has seen a 50% drop in referrals being picked up by its pro-bono barrister panel . 'Either because people are slammed, or they need to focus on paid work,' says Kari. And, the 'more simple, formulaic' social care cases that ASC used to funnel through to volunteer lawyers from city firms, as part of the firms' CSR commitment, have dried up. Kari worries that the money these big commercial firms currently donate to ASC in exchange for their lawyers having the opportunity to do social care work may also dry up. 'Our cases are more complex now because the environment is new. We anticipate that the cases will start to come through again soon but if we can't provide work which can be done by lawyers who aren't experts in social care, we will have to be inventive about how we maintain those relationships with firms in the future.'

Laura Redman tells Fiona Bawdon how the spirit of collaboration and video -conferencing has kept newly-launched Justice Together on course, despite the pandemic

When a group of independent funders came together to create Justice Together, their aim was to transform the legal landscape for migrants in the UK. They couldn't have foreseen that, by the time Justice Together was launched in October 2020, the entire world would have been turned upside down by Covid-19. The pandemic has made Justice Together's work even more urgent and important, having laid bare the long-standing inequality and injustice faced by those having to negotiate the Home Office's complex and unforgiving immigration bureaucracy. Justice Together's acting head Laura Redman (head Hazel Williams is on maternity leave) stresses these problems long pre-dated the current health emergency: 'The pandemic exposed and exacerbated existing problems in the immigration sector.' While the pandemic has given greater urgency to Justice Together's work, it could equally have blown the organisation's vision - that migrants 'can access justice fairly and equally and get on with their lives' - off course, so dramatic has covid-19's impact been on migrant communities and social justice organisations. The fact that this hasn't happened is, fittingly, thanks to the same kind of collaborative spirit that led to Justice Together's creation in the first place. Just as a group of 11 funders (including TLEF) came together to create Justice Together, so a similar number of foundations and charities (also including TLEF) joined forces early in the pandemic to create the Community Justice Fund, to support existing social welfare legal advice organisations through the immediate crisis and beyond. With significant extra resources being put into the sector, rather than fire-fighting, Justice Together has been able to stay the course and continue with its plans to transform access to justice in the UK immigration system. Justice Together's first task when it launched last autumn was to embark on a consultation programme, to hear the widest range of views about what needs fixing in the immigration legal advice sector and what services are most needed. Due to the wonders of video conferencing, in just over a month, Justice Together was able to host roundtables in every region and devolved nation in the UK, attended by local advice providers and, community groups; consult national legal and campaigning organisations, like JCWI, Public Law Project, Rights of Women, and NACCOM; plus hold three focus groups with individual migrants. Laura tots them up: in all, she and her two colleagues spoke to over 200 people (153 at 15 roundtables, including 46 people with lived experience of the immigration system; 20 at three focus groups; 33 individual calls). Having to do it all remotely meant 'we could have meetings in Northern Ireland and England on the same day,' she says. It also likely boosted the numbers who could attend, although - inevitably - some conversations will have lacked the depth and detail that only comes with face-to-face conversations. The results of the consultation were used to shape Justice Together's strategy, which it launched December 2020. Some of the themes that emerged strongly were the lack of collaboration and networking between organisations providing legal and other support to migrants; and the need for better referral pathways to make it easier for clients to get advice (one adviser reported that it can take 15 phone calls to find somewhere to refer clients); high levels of vicarious trauma experienced by advisers who are repeatedly hearing harrowing accounts from clients; and problems with recruitment and retention. During the focus groups, young migrants spoke about their experiences of being given poor quality advice, and the lack of empathy they often felt from legal advisers: they described feeling 'disregarded and disbelieved'; as if they were 'just another number through the door'. None of these deep-rooted issues will be easy to resolve, but Justice Together has 10 years in which to try. Its response to the consultation process has been to put collaboration and partnership working more firmly at the heart of its strategy. Grantees are 'grant partners'; and as well as providing funding, it aims to support them 'to build the power and influence of people with lived and learned experience of the immigration system and embed anti-racism strategies'. Importantly, says Laura, Justice Together is also urging applicants to be as honest and realistic as possible about what funding and support they need in order to do the work safely and well. Justice Together funds not just advice provision but also influencing work, in recognition of the impact of the often hostile and ill-informed backdrop against which immigration policy is decided and implemented, and legal advisers and their clients have to operate. Justice Together's first grant partners will be announced in late April or early May, with funds being rolled out in summer 2021.