Access to Justice Inquiry: what it means for immigration and legal advice services

In 2025, the UK Parliament’s Justice Committee launched a major inquiry into access to justice in England and Wales, placing the long-term consequences of legal aid cuts under scrutiny. The inquiry examines the state of legal services, representation, and the long-term impact of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO), which reduced civil legal aid from large areas of law. The inquiry is receiving oral evidence from the advice sector on the sustainability of the legal aid system, the growing reliance on pro bono provision, and whether digital, regulatory and financial innovation can realistically address widening gaps across civil, criminal and family law.

The Public Accounts Committee also opened an inquiry into the operation and cost of the asylum system. Whilst the inquires may partly reflect the political rhetoric surrounding immigration, they point to issues and weaknesses the sector experiences in the functioning, cost and fairness of justice and immigration systems.

For those working across immigration and social welfare advice, these concerns highlight how access to justice is not a marginal policy issue, but a core social infrastructure.

The principle that everyone, regardless of income or status, should be able to access legal information, advice and remedies is foundational to the rule of law. Yet across the UK, that principle is increasingly fragile.

There is broad consensus among practitioners and researchers that demand for legal advice is rising in immigration, housing and social welfare law, not least due to fast paced government policy change. With chronic funding shortages in the advice sector, help beyond initial one-off advice is often unavailable, meaning problems escalate into crisis. People are expected to navigate complex legal systems alone, relying on digital platforms, informal networks, or, in some cases, unregulated or poor-quality advisers, rather than structured, publicly funded support.

From our experience working with partner organisations and our own legal aid cases, this reality disproportionately affects those already facing poverty, those with an insecure immigration status, and experiencing multiple disadvantages. When advice is delayed or inaccessible, legal problems quickly lead to housing crises, destitution, family breakdown or prolonged insecurity and psychological harm, all of which carry far greater human and financial coast than early intervention would have done.We consistently raise the importance of sustainable advice provision with the UK Government in other forums, for example using our convening role within the Civil Society EU Settlement Scheme Alliance to request further funding for the advice sector.

Last year, Seraphus also contributed to a joint Welsh response to the Access to Justice parliamentary inquiry. Wales illustrates the structural pressures vividly for the legal aid sector which Seraphus heard outlined during the writing of the joint response to the Access to Justice inquiry. Vulnerable groups including minority ethnic communities and unaccompanied children face acute barriers to representation.

Immigration legal aid provision has reduced significantly in Wales and even where services exist, capacity is stretched. Providers are forced to prioritise urgent or high-risk cases, turning others away so that status issues remain unresolved, insecurity and exclusion are prolonged, and vulnerability heightened. 

A central driver of the justice gap remains the reduction of legal aid following LASPO. Scope reductions and fee constraints have reshaped the legal services landscape, particularly in civil and immigration law.

Research indicates that millions of people also lack realistic access to community care legal advice, effectively excluding large sections of the population from challenging unlawful or incorrect decisions unless they can afford private representation. For low-income households, this option is largely illusory. The impact is geographically uneven with advice deserts in areas such as the East of England, West of England and Wales.

Economic analysis underscores that legal aid is a sound fiscal investment because early, specialist advice prevents escalation thus reducing costs for crisis interventions by housing, health, social care and welfare systems. In our view however, the framing of these inquiries as primarily about cost and system efficiency, risks obscuring a more fundamental question: whether the UK is prepared to treat access to legal advice as a civic right rather than a market commodity. The evidence from our work is unambiguous, when people cannot access timely, specialist advice, the consequences are not abstract. They are felt in the lives of individuals and families who lose their homes, their status, or their ability to remain in the country they have built their lives in.

Beyond funding and capacity, there is a cultural dimension to the crisis. Frontline organisations report increasing scepticism among service users about whether lawyers or formal systems will help them. When trust erodes, people delay seeking advice leading to problems intersecting and increasing, more expensive and complex to resolve for individuals and for public services.

The challenges are systemic, but the direction of travel should be clear. Based on our casework experience, engagement with the sector and evidence across parliamentary inquiries, Seraphus believes the following changes should be clear priorities:

• Stable, long-term investment in advice infrastructure, allowing organisations to retain staff and build expertise.
• Workforce development pathways to strengthen the pipeline of accredited immigration and social welfare advisers.
• Co-produced access to justice strategies aligning government, funders and frontline organisations.
• Responsive models that link legal advice with housing, welfare, health and community support.

Across parliamentary scrutiny, regulatory reporting and frontline testimony, there is clear alignment about the causes and consequences of the access to justice crisis.  The question is not whether the system is under strain but whether government and funders are prepared to treat legal advice as essential civic infrastructure that underpins wellbeing, positive outcomes for all, social stability, public confidence and the rule of law itself.

In our view, the Justice Committee inquiry is an important opportunity if it can lead to binding commitments on legal aid funding. Seraphus will continue to advocate for the communities we serve, and press for an advice system that is properly resourced, geographically available, and trusted by the people who need it most.