There should be no need for a small band of volunteer workers to spend hours of their time preparing applications to get asylum seekers released from detention. Given that legal aid for bail applications was made available last year, it seems even sillier that it still falls to a small charity to do this essential legal work.

However, since Bail For Immigration Detainees was set up in June 1998, there has not been a substantial change to the practice of arbitrary detention. A few superficial adjustments have been made here and there, but these look absolutely insignificant in a climate of all major political parties appearing hell-bent on detaining ever increasing numbers of people.

The allocation of legal aid came with a sting in the tail; that a bail application could only be made if the chances of a successful outcome are over fifty per cent. BID encourages the Legal Services Commission and immigration solicitors to abandon this pre-judging of a client's case, and in the meantime we act for many victims of stringent merits testing.

The overwhelming majority of people for whom BID has obtained bail do not have substantial sureties, and some have not had any sureties at all. Partly as a result of BID's representations, in court and through open letters jointly written with the Bail Circle, Chief Adjudicators' Guidelines have now been changed to acknowledge that asylum seekers do not usually have friends or family who can act as sureties.

At present, there is no automatic right to a bail hearing; the 1999 Asylum and Immigration Act makes provisions for statutory bail applications but these will not be in force until October this year, at the earliest. Even when all detainees are entitled to a bail hearing it is difficult to see how practical it is for the small amount of already overloaded, publicly funded solicitors to make a decent job of preparing and presenting bail applications.

The implementation of the Human Rights Act last year also made little difference to the reckless abandon with which the Immigration Service detains people, often in breach of their own guidelines. Frequently, BID acts for people who have been tortured, people who are suffering from pretty severe mental distress and people who have been detained for long periods.

Recently, BID secured release for asylum seekers detained for over two years; the equivalent of criminal sentences of more than four years. We have also successfully fought bail applications on behalf of unaccompanied minors detained by the Immigration Service.

With the detention estate set to increase further, and with more asylum seekers being detained in prisons, often far from London where it is nearly impossible for anyone outside the prison to contact them, chances of getting more solicitors to apply for bail look remote indeed.

Even when the detention estate reaches the four thousand mark, BID will continue to seek to make as many bail applications as possible, and also to train as many people as possible about the process of applying for the fundamental human right of liberty. If this right is to mean anything at all, it must be mean something for the most abused, insulted and mistreated in our society, every bit as much as for the most powerful.

Currently over 1,500 immigration detainees are in detention.

Rosy Bremer (Volunteer Co-Ordinator of BID South)

Bail For: Immigration Detainees has two offices:

London:Tel no; 0207 247 3590

email: bailforimmigrationdetainees@yahoo.co.uk

Portsmouth (for detainees held in Haslar and HMP

Winchester) Tel no: 023 9229 1916.