Law firm suing the Home Office to let migrants bring families to Britain was given nearly £1m in taxpayer cash

The firm is involved in legal action to prevent the government from implementing stricter immigration controls.

Duncan Lewis solicitors are representing Migrants at Work, a pro-migrant charity, in its recent legal action to stop the government from disbarring migrants on the health and social care visa from bringing dependants to Britain.

Migrants at Work claim that the new rules, which came into effect last month, are discriminatory and will force people to choose between coming to the UK to work in the care sector and staying in their home country with their family.

Robert Bates, the Director of Research at the CMC, told GB News: “Our findings show that the government may be trying to talk-the-talk, but in reality it is propping up an industrial complex of left wing lawyers, funnelling taxpayers’ money to line the pockets of those who want to keep Britain’s borders wide open.”

“Even the meagre offerings put forward by this government look set to flounder. Its plans for illegal migration are superficial and designed solely for nice sounding press releases. Their plans to reduce legal migration will do nothing to bring net migration down from the hundreds of thousands.”

“The Centre for Migration Control will be launching a new project next month, revealing the extent to which the government has been subsidising the work of these activist law firms like Duncan Lewis. Unless there is a blanket ban on these kinds of grants, any attempts to clamp down on mass migration, or illegal channel crossings, will flounder as a result of pernicious lawfare in the immigration courts.”

Duncan Lewis received government grants as a part of the Department for Work and Pensions’ Kickstart Scheme which is aimed at helping companies hire young people.

In 2022 net migration into Britain hit a record high at 745,000.

Jeremy Bloom, a lawyer at Duncan Lewis, told The Guardian: “We haven’t seen any evidence that the Home Office has properly considered the impact that this will have on people coming to the UK on health and social care visas, on the vulnerable individuals who need access to social care, or on the wider system of social care.”

He continued: “The secretary of state is clear that a full impact assessment was not carried out prior to the introduction of the policy, which raises very serious concerns about whether he has complied with the public sector equality duty.”

More than 120,000 dependants accompanied 100,000 care workers in the year ending September 2023.

A government spokesperson described these numbers as “unsustainable” and explained this “is why reforms are now in place restricting care workers from bringing dependants with them”.

Richard Tice, leader of the Reform Party, said: “It’s outrageous that a lefty law firm is taking taxpayer money while suing the government to maintain mass migration.”

“Ministers should not be providing grants to law firms; this is an abuse of taxpayers’ cash.”

“The government was elected on a manifesto promise to get migration down and instead it chooses to fund law firms that are working actively against this policy.”

“We must get migration down and control our borders, unfortunately this will never be achieved under this Conservative government.”

A DWP spokesperson said: "The Kickstart scheme, which ran from 2020 until 2022, was designed to support young people in extraordinary circumstances as the country came out of the pandemic. The scheme is closed, and no longer provides funding to Duncan Lewis or any other organisation."