Why Can We Not Have A Proper Justice System?

From textbook special forces op to legal groundhog day?

After drama off the Isle of Wight, another re-run of a legal farce looms

Melanie Phillips Oct 27

Two days ago, seven Nigerian stowaways accused of seizing control of the Nave Andromeda, an oil tanker sailing near the Isle of Wight, were overpowered and detained during a nine-minute raid by members of the Royal Navy’s elite Special Boat Service.

The seven are being held for questioning at various police stations. If they are found guilty of the offence of "seizing or exercising control of a ship by use of threats or force", they face jail. 

But — guess what — the seven are seeking asylum in the UK. And now former immigration chiefs are warning that they might drag out their asylum claims for years, well beyond any prison terms they may serve.

Well, there’s a surprise.

The Telegraph reports: 

David Wood, the director general of immigration enforcement at the Home Office until 2015, warned that even if the men were jailed for more than three years, they could still fight deportation under Article 3 of the Human Rights Act. 

… “The other problem would be securing the consent of Nigeria to take the stowaways back once they had served any prison sentence notwithstanding any Article 3 claim”, added Mr Wood.

“At the end of the day, they don't say: ‘We are not taking these people back.’ They prevaricate,” he said. “They say: ‘We are not satisfied that this person is Nigerian’ and don’t engage in any debate about it.”

… Two years ago, four migrants from Nigeria and Libya ran amok on a container ship during a 14-hour stand-off in the Thames Estuary, waving metal poles and throwing faeces, before claiming asylum in the UK. The group's immigration status is due to be “reviewed" by the Border Force upon completion of their prison sentences.

Past precedent hardly gives a cause for optimism that people who break UK law in seeking asylum can be thrown out as undesirables. As The Times observes:  

In 2006 nine Afghan asylum seekers won a legal challenge over their right to stay in the UK after they seized a Boeing 727 and forced the crew to fly to Stansted Airport in Essex six years earlier. The government repeatedly refused to grant refugee status to the group, who were escaping the Taliban, but was overruled in the High Court.

This is precisely the problem that exercises the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, and has led her and Boris Johnson to attack “activist” and “leftie” immigration lawyers for frustrating attempts to deport illegal immigrants and those whose asylum claims have been turned down.

This year, there have already been 7,500 migrants using people-smugglers to cross the Channel in order to claim asylum in the UK, almost four times last year's total, and many deportation flights have been grounded by last-minute appeals on human rights grounds. Today this illegal and unscrupulous trade produced another tragedy when at least one person died after a boat carrying migrants sank while trying to reach the UK from France.

The Home Secretary is reportedly planning to amend the UK’s Human Rights Act to limit the types of asylum appeals which can be brought under its provisions.

But amending this act would surely not solve the problem, since the UK would remain bound by the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights and thus any appeal rulings by the European Court of Human Rights. Previous governments which have railed against the use of human rights law to frustrate their policies have nevertheless flinched from taking the one step that would end this problem — removing the UK’s signature from the European human rights convention.

In my Times column this morning, where I criticised both the language used by Patel and Johnson as well as by the 800 members of the legal profession who have signed a letter criticising them for attacking immigration lawyers, I wrote this: 

There is a legitimate argument that ministerial attacks on lawyers are a dangerous attack on the independence of the profession. It’s also fair to criticise Patel and Johnson for using intemperate and generalised language. Most immigration lawyers merely do their best for their clients by seeking every possible avenue provided for them by the law. Indeed, the reason such lawyers are able to frustrate government policy is because the laws on the statute book provide them with the opportunities to do so, or because of procedural errors made by the Home Office itself.

Rather than attack the lawyers for doing their job, it would surely be more appropriate for the Home Secretary to put her own house in order and for parliament to change the laws that are considered unhelpful. Otherwise, attacking “leftie lawyers” can be seen merely as a populist insult enabling these politicians to pander to public outrage while failing to take the necessary measures.

But it wouldn’t be enough to change the Human Rights Act. The government would almost certainly need to take rather more drastic action in untangling the UK from European human rights law. And that’s a step that, despite its bullish rhetoric, the British government is still unlikely to take.