Community Legal Service (Asylum and Immigration Appeals) (Amendment) Regulations 2007

My Lords, we are also most grateful to the Minister for his careful and thorough explanation to supplement the documents we have before us, including a comprehensive Explanatory Memorandum. I have only question for the noble Lord. How many of the cases which have come before the tribunal have been subject to disallowance of an application for legal aid? Clearly the whole point of the exercise is that there are certain cases which are totally unmeritorious and therefore result in the disallowance of an application for legal aid retrospectively, otherwise there would be no point in having the order. One hopes that the practitioners represented by the organisations which the noble Lord listed as being consulted—the practitioners group, the Law Society, the Bar Council and ILPA—would have sufficient sense and caution to advise their clients in cases where there in no merit. I hope that these regulations are of a precautionary nature and that there would be extremely few cases that came before the tribunal where, because of the unmeritorious nature of the appeal, the tribunal finally disallowed it. If the noble Lord can give us those figures, we will be most grateful.