Eagle: Tough penalties
There is “growing evidence” that unregulated immigration lawyers are abusing the system, the government has claimed in unveiling beefed-up powers for the Immigration Advice Authority (IAA).
Changes to the Border Security, Asylum, and Immigration Bill will give the IAA powers akin to those of legal regulators to immediately suspend advisers and also to hand out fines of up to £15,000.
Immigration is a unique practice area in that it is not a reserved legal activity but those who are not qualified lawyers can only operate in it if registered and regulated by the IAA.
Providing unregulated immigration advice and services is a criminal offence which can lead to jail time but the bill will give the IAA these extra powers so that it can make “faster and earlier interventions… to stop rogue advisers in their tracks”, the Home Office said.
“Growing evidence has shown how these fake lawyers are acting as middlemen for those trying to abuse the immigration system in a bid to stay in the UK, or trying to cash in on people’s desperation, providing poor quality or outright fraudulent immigration advice,” it said.
The new laws will also close a loophole that allows someone currently banned from giving immigration advice to continue giving advice under supervision – “ensuring people banned from providing immigration advice cannot set up shop elsewhere”.
In addition, the IAA will be able to compel former advisers to take part in complaint investigations about their past conduct if they are no longer registered. This will prevent them from attempting to avoid investigation through simply leaving their role.
Dame Angela Eagle, the minister for Border Security, said: “Shameless individuals offering immigration advice completely illegally must be held to account.
“That is why we are introducing these tough financial penalties for rogue firms and advisers, better protecting the integrity of our immigration system as well as vulnerable people in genuine need of advice, as we restore order to our asylum system through the Plan for Change.”
The Home Office said unregistered advisers were finding new ways to target victims, pointing to the case last year of Sukhwinder Singh Kang, who posed as a registered immigration adviser on Facebook to target vulnerable young women and deceive them into paying significant sums of money for advice.
He was sentenced to 16 months’ imprisonment, suspended for 18 months.
The Home Office said the IAA’s new powers would “bolster” work its Professional Enabler Disruptions team was already carrying out.
In November 2024, it said, the team uncovered a London-based “rogue lawyer” who was directly submitting hundreds of immigration applications with zero knowledge of the law firm that was meant to be ‘supervising’ them.
“These applications were bound to fail, wasting caseworkers’ time, and impacting people’s legitimate applications.”
Legal regulators have now launched an investigation, it said.
The changes form part of a wider package of immigration measures, which will include a new 24-week target for the immigration and asylum chamber of the First-tier Tribunal to decide appeals brought by those receiving accommodation support or who are foreign offenders.
Caseworkers will use artificial intelligence to speed up access to the relevant country advice, and summarise lengthy interview transcripts, “streamlining asylum processing without compromising on the quality of human decisions”, according to the Home Office.
The technology could save decision makers up to an hour per case, it said.
Law Society president Richard Atkinson said ensuring there were enough legally aided immigration and asylum lawyers would help deter the use of unregulated immigration advisers.
He went on: “While a target for first-tier immigration tribunals to decide on appeals is laudable in theory, we are concerned this proposal will be unworkable in practice as the justice system is already struggling to cope with current levels of demand.
“There is a long wait for appeals to be processed due to the sheer volume of cases going through the system. Efforts to clear the legacy backlog of asylum claims have led to more initial claims being refused, resulting in the number of appeals increasing even further.
“Using AI could help speed up processing asylum claims but safeguards will need to be in place including to ensure that any results produced by AI are accurate and the application of the tools does not result in miscarriages of justice.”
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