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Children seeking refuge in Britain are being deprived vital help of lawyers because of cuts to legal aid funding

Refugee and Migrant Justice, formerly the Refugee Legal Centre, blames the harshness of the legal aid funding regime for forcing it to close its doors on 10,000 asylum seekers. That number includes about 900 children who arrive by themselves in the UK from countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Somali.

This week is Refugee Weekwhich aims to "to celebrate the contribution refugees and to promote better understanding between communities,". There is work to be done as RMJ goes into administration , Ministers are looking forcibly deport children of 4 million pounds UK Border Agency "reintegration center" in Afghanistan. That would be "major changes in policy" as earlier commitments, which are not children seeking asylum will be returned only if there is sufficient accommodation and service was stopped on the site are sent back.

This is perhaps difficult to imagine a part of society are more vulnerable and more in need of "access to justice," than children separated from their parents, seeking asylum in Britain. But they really need lawyers?

"They made me sit there and, like in a slave market, immigration officers were told to look at me and guess my age. It was like I was going to be sold. One would say 24 years, and other would say 21."

That is the disturbing account of Hasan (not his real name), a 16-year-old Iranian boy talking about his reception by immigration officers at Heathrow. He was exhausted after months travelling from his home to Thailand, then China, before flying to London. His story and those of 26 other children were documented in a powerful 2007 study commissioned by the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association (pdf).

The default position of the Home Office for child asylum seekers is to give discretionary leave until they are 17 and half years old. Even if they have a solid reason for claiming asylum, it will not get considered unless they have a lawyer to force the issue. If it does not get considered when they turn 18, the Home Office can remove them. The fact that "you are a child soldier, considered a violation of your human rights, is no longer relevant because you're 18", explains Heaven Crawley, professor of international migration at Swansea University who wrote the ILPA report. The report explored concerns that half of all asylum applicants claiming to be "children" were being challenged on age like Hassan.

"The reality is that kids get deported under 18, under 16 and even from foster care placements at 14," Crawley says. Often that happens in "third country" cases, where the children pass through another European country, and can be about legally removed to those places.

A good lawyer can stop this. But children are not able in the system, which was described by the Independent Asylum Commission as being permeated by "a culture of disbelief". Three-quarters of asylum seekers are turned down by the Home Office and one quarter of cases that go to appeal are overturned by an independent tribunal. That system has little regard for the traumatic circumstances in which children often leave their home countries. Prof Crawley explains: "You need a lawyer to sit there and say that you have the right, for example, not to continue talking about an experience which you're finding very distressing. Such as not wanting to talk about their parents being machete-ed in front of them."

The campaign to save RMJ, a vital lifeline for children such as Hassan, has attracted the support of an impressively diverse list of the great and good, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Ken Loach and Juliet Stevenson.

But its plight illustrates a widespread problem about the precarious nature of the legally aided not-for-profit sector. A 2008 survey by the Law Centres Federation

There's nothing wrong with fixed fees in principle. But only, as Steve Hynes and I argued in The Justice Gap (Legal Action Group, 2009), if the levels are realistic and the escape provisions reasonable. Two fairly hefty "ifs" â€" and that is why a committee of MPs led by Alan Beith memorably damned the Carter proposals as "a breathtaking risk".

What have the introduction of fixed fees meant for RMJ? Caroline Slocock, chief exec, reckons that income per client over the last two years has fallen by 46%. Fixed fees result in hard-pressed practitioners and less scrupulous cutting corners (you only get paid as much for an hour as you do for eight). Conversely, they penalise diligent advisers committed to securing access to justice for vulnerable and difficult clients. RMJ points to an LSC response to a freedom of information request revealing almost one third (29%) of asylum providers are "making massive profits" from the new scheme.

It's shocking that an organisation as vital as RMJ can go to the wall as a result of what amounts to a cash flow problem. It is doubly shocking that it happens at a time when the government announces £4m for a reintegration centre in Kabul.

Jon Robins is a freelance journalist and director of the legal research company Jures (www.jures.co.uk), which published Closing the Justice Gap a collection of essays of "radical, exciting and innovative ways to reform access to justice'"

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