LONDON (TrustLaw) – The UK government’s planned cuts to its legal aid scheme will severely disadvantage migrant and refugee women, who may lack knowledge of the UK legal system and family support or face language barriers, campaigners say.
The reforms, proposed by the government in November, would cut legal aid from civil areas including immigration, housing, employment and debt, unless a person’s life, home or freedom is at risk.
Lawyers and aid organisations argue the scheme’s harshest cuts since its 1949 inception will deny some half a million people justice.
“This is a major shift and poses a serious threat to fundamental
principles of equal access to justice,” Zrinka Bralo, executive director of the London-based Migrant and Refugee Communities Forum in London, told TrustLaw.
“Migrant and refugee women are disadvantaged because they may not speak English well enough, they do not know what support and protection is available to them, they may be traumatised and may not have support networks of family and friends.”
Under the proposals, private family law cases would be denied legal aid funding unless domestic violence was involved.
Nonetheless, migrant and refugee women who experience domestic violence will be disadvantaged because their immigration status is linked to that of their husbands, or claimed by their husbands, Bralo said
http://womennewsnetwork.net/2011/07/22/uk-plan-limits-immigrant-women/
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