Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Avebury and Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood

Tuesday 1st April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on moving this important amendment, based on one of the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which she is a distinguished member.

Clause 15 removes the right of appeal to the tribunal from all immigration decisions except those dealing with protection and human rights. In those remaining cases, new Section 85(5) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act, inserted by Clause 15, requires the Secretary of State’s consent for a new matter to be raised before the tribunal, as it frequently is because new evidence comes to light following the original decision; my noble friend has given examples of how this can happen. We also heard from my noble friend that in the opinion of the JCHR it should be for the tribunal itself to decide whether the new matter is within its jurisdiction and, if so, to consider it on appeal, with the Secretary of State responding to it as she normally does.

It is not suggested that the tribunal has allowed the abuse of its own process in the past, or that it has treated the Secretary of State unfairly, or that the existing process is inefficient. What can happen not infrequently, however, is that the Secretary of State withdraws her decision, saying that she wishes to reconsider the case, and then returns several months later with a new decision very similar to the previous one, wasting the time and money of both the appellant and the tribunal. The Tribunal Procedure Committee is consulting on a rule for the First-tier Tribunal similar to the one that prevents the Secretary of State from putting a stop to an appeal in the Upper Tribunal by withdrawing her decision. The Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association suspects that the subsection we seek to amend is designed to thwart such a change.

My noble friend referred to the Constitution Committee, which has drawn the attention of your Lordships to what it and the JCHR both consider to be a serious question in relation to Clause 15(5): whether it undermines the common law right of access to justice. The Government’s case is that appellants may be able to get to the court by way of judicial review, and no doubt some will do so in spite of the financial obstacles created by the abolition of legal aid. However, this conditional route does not satisfy the common law, and that will no doubt be tested in the courts. The judicial review cases will be more expensive and take longer than appeals, even though it will now be the tribunal that hears them because Treasury solicitors and counsel will have to be employed; they are very expensive people. Have the Government made any estimate of the number of JR cases and the reduction in the savings that were otherwise expected arising from the JR cases that were otherwise to be heard?

In the remaining cases, now to be dealt with via administrative review, a smaller proportion of those concerned will be successful than if they had been able to appeal. That is the whole point of the exercise: not to simplify the way the cases are handled but getting to the same outcomes.

Like my noble friend, I object to a proposal which gives the Executive power to intervene in the procedures of a court of law, and particularly so when it is one of the parties to the case in question. I hope that the Government will think again.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, having spent some five years as Treasury counsel, periodically attempting to remove illegal immigrants, and then having spent some decades as a judge lamenting the absurdly over-elaborate appeals systems under which those resisting removal could string out a whole series of appeals for years on end, I can readily see—to use an inelegant colloquialism—where the Government are coming from in Clause 15(5). It is now some dozen years since the so-called one-stop appeal was sought to be introduced. Now, of course, the Government are intent, yet more fundamentally, on substituting in large part administrative reviews for appeals in all but the comparatively few cases where truly basic freedoms are at issue: refugee status, humanitarian protection and human rights.

For my part, I am not against this general reduction in appeal rights, although I may not go quite so far as to vote against the next proposed amendment, which is to remove the entirety of Clause 15. Nor am I against, as I made plain in Committee, what is now Clause 18, which to some extent may be expected to constrain the court’s readiness to allow Article 8 considerations to frustrate attempts to remove foreign criminals and others who are here in violation of immigration controls. I interpolate only that Clause 18 will of course be informed by Amendment 58, tabled by the Minister and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, to safeguard the welfare of children.

I am, however, strongly against Clause 15(5), to which this amendment goes. This provision seems to me to represent a bridge too far. The noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, has already clearly explained the basic objections to this provision and has noted that serious reservations have been expressed about it: expressed twice now by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and yet more recently by the Select Committee on the Constitution. It would not be helpful for me to restate all these objections in detail. Suffice it to say that it seems intrinsically objectionable for the Government, one of the parties before the tribunal on the appeal, themselves to have the last word with regard to what the tribunal may or may not consider.

By all means let the Government object to a new ground of appeal or some new reason for the appellant seeking to stay if they are genuinely unable to deal with it or, indeed, if they are genuinely unable to reach and declare their own decision on it by the time it is raised. Indeed, the tribunal may well hold that the Government are entitled to an adjournment if, in truth, they are prejudiced by the point being taken late. However, it is quite another thing to say, as Clause 15(5) does, that the Government can deny the tribunal the right to deal with a new matter on the appeal before it, and thus force the appellant—assuming that he wishes to pursue the point—to start all over again, with all the delay and, as we have heard, the prohibitive expense that that would necessarily involve. That, I respectfully repeat, goes altogether too far. Your Lordships should prefer instead wording which—if not here in perfect formulation—is in some way akin to that here proposed, which, heaven knows, is a modest enough power to confer on the tribunal itself.