Plans are under way to merge the layers of the asylum appeals system into one.

A consultation document published this week by the Home Office and Department for Constitutional Affairs also proposes to give the Immigration Services Comm-issioner powers to investigate legal advisers, sanctions for asylum seekers who destroy documentation or travel without it, and an end to support for families able but unwilling to return home.

Home secretary David Blunkett said:"Our strategy is not anti-immigration. But the asylum system cannot work in the interests of genuine refugees if it is abused and open to exploitation by criminal gangs and the so-called legal advisers who help them."

But chief executive of the Refugee Council Maeve Sherlock warned that sanctioning asylum seekers arriving without documents was "penalising the victims rather than targeting the criminal traffickers."

Last week the government announced that up to 15,000 families caught up in the backlog of asylum applications would be eligible to remain in the UK, under a one-off exercise aimed at saving money.

The exercise will apply to families who sought asylum before October 2000, had children before that date, and suffered delays in the system. It will also apply where the final appeals process has not been exhausted and final decisions were made but removal was not effected.

- Asylum reforms consultation until 17 November. E-mail comments to INDLegislation@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk