Legal Aid Agency
Ministry of Justice
In one sentence
The taxpayer pays the Home Office case and the lawyers trying to stop it.
The Legal Aid Agency funds immigration and asylum advice, tribunal appeals and judicial review. The NAO lists legal-aid capacity as a bottleneck in the asylum system — the queue of funded challenges is why people stay. Law centres, Asylum Aid, specialist NGOs and private firms bill the same public purse that pays for the hotels. From September 2025 the Lord Chancellor is David Lammy. There is no matching fund for the victim of a foreign-national offender fighting to have him removed.
Capacity in the legal aid sector and judicial capacity for hearing appeals [limit] the effective functioning of the asylum system.
What they did
ongoing
What it buys
First-tier and upper-tribunal appeals, judicial review, Article 3 and Article 8 claims, last-minute injunctions.
Sep 2025
Political owner
Lammy becomes Lord Chancellor — the minister for the courts and the legal-aid cheque.
This file is about public money, not a Commons division. The grant table is on the Money page.
Sources: NAO, Dec 2025; MoJ legal aid statistics