Member

The noble Lords, Lord Carlile and Lord Kerr, were gracious in mentioning that the Ministry of Justice, for which I am not accountable in this House—although I am speaking on behalf of the Government as a whole—has uplifted the housing debt, immigration and asylum legal aid fees scheme. It has injected an extra £20 million into the civil legal aid sector each year. It has increased overall spending on immigration and asylum work by 30%. It now includes paid travel time when providers attend to give in-person advice. It has given a lot of extra investment and support. That has been done for the purpose—again, I am grateful for the comments that have been made—of speeding up asylum claims, getting those asylum claims processed and finding that people either have a genuine asylum claim, in which case we move on to stage two of finding how we can resettle those individuals, or they do not have an asylum claim, in which case they are then subject to potential removal, subject to appeals as currently operated.