This book is a close investigation of the immigration and asylum legal aid market in England and Wales, based on six years of empirical research (set out in more detail later in this chapter). It explores the interactions of demand, supply, quality of services, financial viability for legal aid practitioners and organisations, and clients’ access to advice and representation. Above all, it argues for a whole-system perspective on legal aid, but one which is informed by evidence and a detailed understanding of the participants in the market.

The focus on one sector, across the branches of the legal profession, helps to understand legal aid as one part of a whole system. It enables assumptions about markets and legal aid to be examined in context. The frameworks for understanding demand and supply in immigration and asylum law should be equally applicable to any category of law and, to some extent, other public services. They should also be relevant over time, although policy changes rapidly. The core concepts of demand, supply, client access and quality will remain central to any systems for governing migration, justice, social welfare and legal aid, and this book aims to offer a toolkit for interpreting the human and economic costs and benefits of reforms.

The Lord Chancellor has a legal duty to secure the availability of legal aid services in certain categories of law. They also have a duty to appoint a senior civil servant as Chief Executive of the Legal Aid Agency (LAA), the executive agency of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), which is responsible for administering legal aid. The LAA employs around 1,450 people across England and Wales, according to its website. It carries out procurement for legal aid services by geographical area every three to five years. This ‘market-based procurement’ of legal aid services was adopted at the time of the Carter Review in 2006, and was intended to keep quality up and costs down, via providers competing for contracts and clients.

Despite legal duties, high-level management and a sizeable workforce, the market-based system for procuring legal aid services in England and Wales is failing to secure either adequate access to legal aid or adequate quality in immigration and asylum work.