Asylum Aid’s response to the Independent Appeals Body call for evidence
Asylum Aid has submitted evidence to the government's consultation on proposals to replace the existing asylum appeals tribunal with a new Independent Appeals Body (IAB). Our response sets out serious concerns about both the proposals themselves and what they would mean for the people we represent.
The wrong solution to the wrong diagnosis
We oppose the creation of a new IAB. The government has framed the asylum appeals backlog as evidence that the existing First-tier Tribunal is not fit for purpose - but this misdiagnoses the problem. The backlog exists largely because the Home Office gets so many decisions wrong in the first place. With 42% of sampled decisions containing significant errors, and the Home Office frequently failing to engage meaningfully with evidence even at the appeal stage, creating a new body does nothing to address the root causes of delay. It simply shifts the problem elsewhere, at considerable cost to the public purse.
Non-lawyers should not decide these cases
We are deeply concerned by the proposal to appoint adjudicators without legal qualifications. Immigration and asylum law is extraordinarily complex - a leading practitioner handbook has grown from 562 pages in 1997 to over 2,300 pages today, and that does not account for the vast body of case law. Errors in these decisions can have irreversible consequences for individuals. Recruiting and training non-lawyers from scratch is also unlikely to reduce the backlog in any meaningful timeframe, and risks creating new pressure on the Upper Tribunal as poorly reasoned decisions are challenged on appeal.
People seeking protection need proper safeguards
Many of the people we represent - survivors of torture, trafficking, gender-based violence, unaccompanied children and stateless people - have highly complex needs that require trauma-informed processes and experienced legal support. A faster, less rigorous system will fail them.
We are also concerned about proposals for paper-based and virtual hearings as default formats. In-person hearings are essential for cases involving credibility assessments or vulnerable appellants, and unrepresented people in particular should never be denied an in-person hearing.
Legal advice must come first
Any new appeals system will fail without a functioning legal aid sector to support it. Currently, 63% of the population in England and Wales have no access to a local immigration and asylum legal aid provider. We see this every day in our casework: people unable to find representation, referrals going unanswered for months, and highly complex cases going unrepresented. The last increase to civil legal aid rates before 2025 was in 1996 - a failure with consequences that have rippled through every part of the asylum system.
Legal aid rates should be reviewed to a realistic level and then it should be a legal requirement that the rates be reviewed every year to ensure they keep pace with inflation and continue to be fair remuneration. Without this, the IAB will face exactly the same access to justice problems as the existing tribunal.
Our conclusion
We urge the government to withdraw or fundamentally reconsider these proposals. What the asylum system needs is not a new body — it is better first-instance decision-making, a properly funded legal aid sector, and a Home Office that engages seriously with the evidence put before it.
If the government presses ahead despite the extensive existing evidence, the new body must be genuinely independent of the Home Office; staffed by legally qualified decision-makers; closely aligned with existing tribunal procedures; and properly resourced to support vulnerable appellants through the process. Anything less risks denying thousands of people access to justice.