Immigration and Asylum Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Anna Turley and Matt Vickers

Tuesday 15th September 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Matt Vickers]

Q To get the result that we want—tackling that abuse—what else should the Home Office be doing in that space? If this is not a solution, what would you put forward as an alternative, if that abuse does exist?

Eleanor Lyons: If you took the premise that there is an issue with the system, I would focus on better training and support for first responder organisations so that they are good at doing referrals in the first place. There is a real mix in terms of how qualified and competent first responder organisations, such as local authorities, police forces and charities, are. I would also look at a higher quality of decision making from the Government. At the moment, about three quarters of negative decisions that are challenged are then accepted as having been the wrong initial decision by the Government, and are overturned. If there were more opportunities for people to be identified, better-quality decisions and a more trauma-informed approach, we would identify victims earlier in the process and there would be fewer challenges on that part. All this legislation will do is to make it very hard for us to identify or support victims who need help.

[The Minister of State, Home Department (Anna Turley)]

Q Thank you all for coming to give evidence to us. More than a third of our charter returns that fail to go ahead have involved a modern slavery referral raised after the return arrangements have been made. Can you give us some indication of why you think that is and, building on your previous answer, what would help to challenge that?

Eleanor Lyons: Thank you, Minister, for your engagement so far on the Bill. It is very much appreciated. Building on what I was saying, we really need a system that allows for early identification and support of victims of exploitation. That includes all victims of exploitation, UK nationals and non-UK nationals. When I first came into my role three years ago, the big conversation was about what mandatory training would look like for first responder organisations, so that they would know how to spot a potential victim of modern slavery. Many victims themselves do not even recognise that they are being exploited. To introduce early support into the system would make a huge change on that side of things.

I am concerned about the Home Office data on already high-risk flights. Less than 2% of the total number in the national referral mechanism are on those flights. The Home Office has five days to make a “reasonable grounds” decision. It only protects a victim of modern slavery for five days if they are referred into the national referral mechanism. If the Government decide that, actually, they do not think that there are grounds for those people being a victim of modern slavery, after that point they do not get any extra enhancements for indefinite leave to remain, so I do not think that that provides extra protection for victims. All we try to do in that period is to provide them with the support and care they need in their recovery period, if they need it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Vickers]

Q Is there a particular feature that you would have liked to see in the Bill to aid you in that objective?

Helen Rance: No.

[Anna Turley]

Q I pass on my thanks to everyone at the NCA for their excellent work. We know how important it is for disrupting the organised, industrial crime that is taking place across borders. It is critical that we intervene and prevent dangerous crossings as early as possible. I wanted to put my thanks on the record for everything that the agency does.

You mentioned the importance of deterrence. That is critical, and it is one of the key things that we want to achieve in the Bill. Could you say a little more about how you think the measures in the Bill will help to deter people and make interventions earlier in the process of illegal immigration?

Helen Rance: In terms of deterrence, we are obviously a law enforcement agency, and we would not make specific definitive judgments on the different effects that the measures will have on deterring crossings or immigration. We very much think that deterrence is about a combination of factors, and is, ultimately, a matter for Government policy. However, we believe that the measures contribute to a system that is seen as firm, fair and less susceptible to exploitation by organised crime groups. It is likely that that will help the overall deterrent effect. The changes to appeals, protection status, asylum arrangements and the removal process might contribute to making the UK a less attractive target for the criminal networks that facilitate illegal immigration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Vickers]

Q Is there any risk that the article 8 provisions in the Bill could move litigation on to different questions, rather than increasing the Government’s ability to remove those with no right to be here? If Parliament wanted to go further in restricting the circumstances in which article 8 can prevent removals, what could it do beyond what is proposed in the Bill?

Professor Ekins: Litigation will certainly arise in consequence of these new provisions, if they are enacted; they will not end the controversy in this space. The litigation may turn on different questions, such as whether something counts as “normally”. There is a great deal of uncertainty about how the changes made by the relevant provision, clause 18, will be received by the courts.

In a sense, the legislation leaves untouched the fundamental structure of article 8 in this context, which is individuated proportionality assessment. It tries to clarify, or maybe streamline, some aspects of the way in which article 8 is understood and applied—those changes are to be welcomed, so far as they go—but it is unclear whether, and to what extent, that will restrain the courts in applying article 8.

The legislation takes for granted continuing individuated assessment. The legislation does not purport to be an exclusive code for article 8, does not displace article 8 under the Human Rights Act, and does not direct the courts to focus only on the terms of this legislation and close their eyes to the Strasbourg case law. The way in which article 8 will be understood and applied will be informed to some extent by this new legislation, but there will be arguments about precisely what it means and whether there are conditionals in the legislation at play.

It will always be open to unlawful migrants and asylum seekers who are making arguments by reference to article 8 to invite the court to go back to the Strasbourg Court’s case law and to take this legislation as, in a sense, advisory. I know that that may sound somewhat strange, but that is effectively the structure we have. Parliament is not clearly telling the courts, “Focus only on this legislation, and close your eyes to the other body of case law.” It could attempt to do so: it could go further, by disapplying article 8 under the Human Rights Act and making this an exclusive code for the relevance of family life. That would require some recasting.

To my mind, the more fundamental problem is that we are maintaining individuated proportionality assessment as the test for the lawfulness of removal. That will inevitably be somewhat—“ad hoc” is perhaps the wrong term, but it will be particular and unpredictable. A great deal will turn on the persons who are making the adjudicative decisions. The Bill obviously has something to say about that, but how it will play out is quite unpredictable.

That is a complicated answer to your question. There will certainly be litigation, and it would be a mistake to think that this new legislation will authoritatively determine how article 8 will be understood. It will make some difference, but much turns on how it is received, which you simply cannot tell from where you sit now.

Dr Casey: I agree. There are two different ways, broadly speaking, that this Bill could be received by courts and tribunals. One way—which, so far as the Home Secretary is concerned, would be the positive scenario—is that the tribunal takes very seriously the clear intent behind the Bill, which is to tighten and narrow the circumstances in which article 8 can be invoked and successfully relied on to resist a removal or deportation.

However, as my colleague Richard pointed out, a lot of the wording in the Bill gives leeway for more flexible or generous interpretations for applicants. For example, the Bill says that article 8 applies “normally” only to a nuclear family—partners residing together, or a parent and a child residing together. That “normally” suggests that judges might take a broader understanding of other types of family arrangements. With the standards throughout the Bill—unreasonable impact, “adverse” impact or “unduly harsh”—there is, again, scope to give these a much more generous interpretation, such that, for some judges, it might be hard not to find an instance where deportation could not be considered harsh or as having an adverse impact on a child, because it separates a family unit.

I can imagine some judges—not all, but some—reading these standards in a generous way that would capture a large sweep of cases and defeat removals and deportations. There is a scenario where the reception of the Bill is such that judges retain quite a lot of discretion to come up with their own understanding of the right balance between the public interest and individuals’ family life and, plausibly within the text of the Bill, to reach conclusions that are in tension with the clear policy intent behind the Bill.

I think that that is an unavoidable situation if one accepts the strictures imposed by the ECHR and its jurisprudence because a sine qua non of article 8 law, as articulated by the Court, is that the tribunal must reach its own assessment—it must reach its own assessment of proportionality. At best, Parliament may give indications of where it wants weighting to go but, to stay within the strictures of the ECHR, the courts must have the final say.

Also, in response to the question about whether, if article 8 claims are less attractive, other claims might be made under the ECHR: absolutely. I imagine that article 3 claims will probably increase. The difference between article 3 and article 8, as the Committee will know, is that article 3 is categorical—there is no qualification if the threshold is met. The threshold sometimes includes things like whether removal will lead to substandard medical care, compared with the NHS; that is ill treatment. We could see a spike in such invocations, and the Bill does not touch article 3 claims whatever.

Professor Ekins: I should add that this legislation, as the Committee knows, builds on the Immigration Act 2014, which also attempted to tighten the understanding and application of article 8; that is largely viewed as having been much less effective than Parliament intended in 2014. This legislation will go further and that is to be welcomed, but the earlier Act should be a cautionary tale about the risks of failure.

[Anna Turley]

Q Thank you very much; I appreciate your responses. May I step back from just the article 8 measures and talk about the Bill in the round? What is your view on whether it strikes the right balance when it comes to honouring our obligations to refugees under the conventions? Are we balancing that with taking stronger action to deal with the challenges that we face internationally on illegal immigration? Is the Bill striking the right balance, or can we go further?

Professor Ekins: In my view, the legislation does not strike the right balance, because it fails—as have successive Bills, I think—to take sufficiently robust measures in relation to the problem of illegal migration and people smuggling; I am thinking of the small boats crisis in particular. That is somewhat distinct from the broader problem of unlawful migration, which is clearly a problem—people overstaying, foreign criminals and so on—but the small boats crisis has particular features that warrant a particular response.

To my mind, unfortunately, although the legislation tinkers with aspects of how the refugee convention should be understood in our law—perhaps we will come to that later—it seems, silently at least, to take for granted that persons who have contracted with people smugglers and made it across the channel are entitled to asylum and to remain in the UK. I think that that is a misunderstanding of the terms of the refugee convention, which do entitle us to expel persons from the UK, even when they are genuine refugees under the meaning of the refugee convention. That is a protection that all member states enjoy. It entitles us to expel them to other states, because they have entered in violation of our migration law. It would be different had they entered directly from a state where their lives were in danger, but no one coming from France is in that position. That makes that a structurally different position to other contexts, when people flee danger.

The legislation simply does not address that feature of the problem. The measures it takes—which, as I say, I welcome as far as they go—simply tinker with the edges and do not address the central problem. Genuine refugees will cross the channel but, so long as contracting with people smugglers is a viable route to enter and thus to settle in the UK, that will persist. It is a logical and rational expenditure of funds, and it is a flourishing business so long as you do not care about the lives of people crossing a dangerous water.

There is a failure to recognise the protections that we have as a country under the refugee convention. We may take action that would not place persons in danger—they can be removed to safe third states. As far as I can see, the Bill is focused on increasing administrative adjudicative capacity to process appeal claims more speedily. That is admirable, but it leaves untouched the central structural problem, which I and others writing for Policy Exchange have tried to draw attention to over the years.

Dr Casey: I agree. I do not see anything in the Bill that would deter unlawful channel crossings. But, as has been mentioned, , depending on how the Bill is received in the courts, it might deter overstaying on visas and the breaching of conditions of your permission to reside. That could be valuable, as those are significant numbers, but I do not see anything that would deter unlawful channel crossings in any way.

You could go further in the Bill and, for example, take advantage of provisions in the refugee convention that allow states to return those convicted of serious criminal offences or of threats to national security to their home countries, even if there was a risk of ill treatment. The refugee convention allows that, but it would not be possible within the confines of the ECHR. Article 3 puts a categorical prohibition on those kinds of returns even if the person being returned poses an enormous threat to the United Kingdom itself. So even if you did take full advantage of everything that the refugee convention permitted you to do to protect your own immigration system, the ECHR would pose even more stringent restrictions in many respects.

Professor Ekins: I agree with everything that Dr Casey has said, but I would add that that is article 3 as—in my view—misinterpreted by the Strasbourg Court. Article 3 does provide a categorical prohibition on torture and subjecting people to inhumane treatment; as I say, that has been misinterpreted in recent decades to establish a much more far-reaching bar on taking action that exposes someone to a risk of such action from third parties.

In 2021, we published a paper that addressed in close detail the misinterpretation of the ECHR and its far-reaching impact for immigration and asylum law. That Policy Exchange paper is backed by Lord Hoffmann, former judge of the House of Lords. It makes clear the problem in the Strasbourg Court’s reading of article 3—as well as its reading of article 8, I should add.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Vickers]

Q If you think that the outcome of entering illegally should be the same as the outcome of entering legally, is there any other deterrent in that space? If the immigration consequence is not used as a deterrent, is there anything that the Refugee Council might accept?

Jon Featonby: For the people who are refugees, it is about having an asylum system that first and foremost does what it should do, which is making decisions as quickly as it can that are right the first time. I think making sure that that happens has been a bit of a challenge under successive Governments now. For the people who are genuinely seeking protection and who need it, the system needs to make sure that they are able to access that protection when they do.

What we have also seen is the challenge at the other end. For the people who are found not to have that protection need, there needs to be a firm and fair system in place to make sure they are removed from the UK as quickly, and hopefully as humanely, as possible. That is probably where there have been challenges. Some of them are legal challenges, but some of it comes down to basic good caseworking in the Home Office.

[Anna Turley]

Q We share your commitment to safe and legal routes; they are an important way to fulfil our obligations. However, as you see, we have large numbers of people who are coming here through irregular means. What proportion of those arriving by irregular means does the Refugee Council think are genuinely fleeing war and persecution? Do you have a view on that?

Jon Featonby: The easiest way to look at some of this is through the immigration statistics published by the Home Office. Since small boats really started in around 2019, the top nationalities have largely stayed the same. There have been people from Afghanistan, Sudan, Eritrea and Iran, and the reasons why people would seek safety from those places are quite well known. Within that time, there have also been spikes from other countries. Quite famously, there was a lot of attention in 2022 on Albanians, but those numbers dropped quite quickly. That was probably a slightly different route from some of the other countries.

The Refugee Council has done some analysis in the past on what you would expect the asylum outcomes to be for those nationalities. Historically, you would expect around two thirds of the people crossing in small boats to go on and get protection. That has dropped slightly in the last year because the overall grant rate has dropped, although one caveat is that because the Home Office has not published appeals outcome statistics for the last three years, it is quite hard to work out exactly what happens once some of those cases go through the appeals process.

Immigration and Asylum Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Anna Turley and Matt Vickers

Committee stage
Tuesday 15th September 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Matt Vickers]

Q What is the single biggest border control measure missing from the Bill?

Tony Smith: It is more what it does not do, which is exclude people coming from safe third countries, such as France, from claiming protection. That was the intention of the Illegal Migration Act. There is also provision in the 2002 legislation where someone has come from a safe country and, under article 31 of the convention relating to the status of refugees, they are not in immediate fear of persecution. We interpreted that as saying, “If you come from France on a small boat, you could have claimed asylum there—you did not have to—ergo you will not be granted asylum in this country.” The previous Government relied on that for the Rwanda plan, and this Government rely on it for the one in, one out scheme. There is now provision to exclude people from claiming asylum if they come via that route. There is no provision to exclude them from claiming protection under human rights or modern slavery.

There are some things in the Bill that I applaud. There are attempts to tighten up on article 8 of the ECHR to stop some claims under human rights and under modern slavery provisions as well, which is to be applauded. But while you continue to run a system where somebody simply needs to get within the 12-mile zone and then make a claim for protection, and you bring them ashore and process that claim in the UK, I am afraid that that is always going to send a message back, particularly to the high-intake nationalities we are talking about, from Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia and Iran, that all you need to do is get within the 12-mile zone and claim protection, and it is very unlikely—only about 4% have ever been removed—that you will be removed. I am afraid that that still creates a factor for migrants who are unsettled in the Schengen zone, who do not want to stay in France and who are determined to come here. It also still fuels the smugglers’ business model—there is profit in this; this is international organised crime—and they will continue to exploit that market.

[Anna Turley]

Q I would like to focus on the measures in the Bill—you made some reference to the ones on modern slavery. Could you expand on how those provisions might make it harder for individuals who have fictitious claims to stop themselves being removed?

Tony Smith: The Bill is really about the asylum process, rather than law enforcement. I think the Bill last year was more about the law enforcement; this is about the asylum process. There are some good things in here. As I say, I applaud the article 8 reforms, because article 8 is often used as a lever quite late in the process. After someone has been here for quite a while and has been through the process, you suddenly get an article 8 claim because they have developed a connection in the UK. So I think that that reform is right and will help to reduce the pull factor.

I like the idea of the tighter protection arrangements—the 30 months at a time. My only counsel against that is that the Home Office, in my experience, tends to automatically grant and grant and grant, because it is a lot easier than refusing, and that might just become an automatic turnover of grants for however long you allow people to stay.

I think you ought to look at who is going home. If people go back to their own country on holiday when they have a claim for refugee status, we can establish that. We have the passenger information and can cross-match that to their asylum records. If people go back to their own country once they have been given some kind of protection status here, they should not be allowed back in, because they are clearly not in fear of persecution.

The faster appeals process is absolutely essential. The problem with the appeals process is that it went over to the Ministry of Justice years ago, when the Home Office and MOJ were split up. The MOJ does not seem to have been really bothered about it—it has other things on its plate. The backlog is over a year now, so you have to try and get a grip of that. I do not know how you get that in the Home Office and how you persuade them, but I think it is a good idea. You really have to get that end-to-end process going right.

I like the idea of recouping public funds from people, a bit like in the student loan scheme. If people have come here and been a draw on public funds, and they then get into the workplace, why would you not claw back some of that money into the public purse?

I think that all those things might reduce pull factors. They are really good reforms. I am not saying they are not good measures; what I am saying is that, in my opinion, they are not good enough to stop the boats.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Vickers]

Q If you could make one amendment to the Bill to increase the distinction between people coming to Britain legally and those entering illegally, what would that be?

Guy Dampier: That is a very difficult one, because one of the big problems that the Bill does not tackle is the fact that an increased number of people are coming legally and then claiming asylum. Since 2019, I think, the number of those coming on the study route has gone up by four times and the number of those coming on the work route has gone up by 22 times. A lot of people are abusing the legal way of getting into the country and then claiming asylum, often suspiciously close to the end of their visa. Nothing in the Bill would really tackle that; that area is really missing.

[Anna Turley]

Q Could you say a little more about the article 8 provisions and how you think they might affect strung-out appeals and deterrence?

Guy Dampier: On the strung-out appeals, the new immigration appeal authority is supposed to help tackle that. The difficulty there, which will touch on article 8, is that potentially the people being used will not be fully legally trained as adjudicators. There are examples of countries that have such a system, including Denmark, Canada and, I think, Norway, but all those have relatively high bars for people to become adjudicators—and in a lot of cases, I think that they end up being lawyers anyway.

The Australians had a similar system. I believe that they cancelled it precisely because the paperwork was being done so badly that they had to redo things or the wrong decisions were being made. Although bad decisions are being made now, the new authority could potentially lead to worse decisions, depending on the quality of the people who come in. We cannot know that quality, but at the moment the lack of qualifications in the legislation is a potential danger.

On article 8, we are seeing restrictions and a narrowing down of things, which is good and will reduce the number of people able to use it. But that will apply only to a minority of cases—even when we are dealing with people who have come here illegally. The majority of people claiming under article 8 now will not be affected. I believe that the Home Office estimates that something like 50% of those who will be refused if this legislation passes will remain in the country illegally; obviously, that is something of a problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Vickers]

Q Is there any evidence that expanding safe and legal routes would reduce the number of small boat crossings, rather than simply increase the overall number of people coming to the UK?

Angela Afzal: To reduce small boat crossings, there will be a range of interventions. Our position would be that the safe routes need to be part of that, because if refugees do not have an alternative, they will use people smugglers. Under the Biden Administration in the US, for example, there was a mixture of a change of internal policy on the border and an extensive offer of safe routes for people. The evidence showed that when there was an alternative, people chose it, and it reduced irregular arrivals significantly.

[Anna Turley]

Q Thank you for joining us this afternoon. You mentioned in your earlier answer that there are not sufficient routes to claim asylum, but a lot of the people who come here, particularly on small boats, have come through another safe country. I think your organisation has said that individuals bypassing safe routes is a secondary issue. How do you think that that enables us to support a fair, rules-based international framework?

Angela Afzal: Sorry; I did not catch the second part of your question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Vickers]

Q In your experience, how often does article 8 make the decisive difference between somebody being allowed to remain or being removed? Do you think that the provisions in the Bill will materially and effectively change that situation?

Jacqui McKenzie: We are worried about the provisions in the Bill around article 8, particularly as they relate to the best interests of children and the redefinition of the family, at a time when we are recognising that families come in all different types and colours—I do not mean colours in terms of race; that is probably not the best word. There is not a straightforward definition of a family. The Bill seeks almost to narrow it down to who lives in the house and who does not. That is the sort of language we are getting from the Home Office in trying to describe what it means, because we do not know yet. All we have is a template of an idea.

We have section 55 on the best interests of the child, which most of us base our work on. That enables families using article 8 to remain together in the country. In the impact assessment accompanying the Bill, I saw that fewer than 12,000 families were likely to be refused. We are going for such a draconian measure to deal with a very small number of people. It almost reminds me of Rwanda again. We spent £700 million and we got four volunteers out. Even if we had got some people out through enforcement, it would have been a very small number.

I cannot quite understand why we are targeting families. A lot of those families are actually the third and fourth generation of people who settled here and then brought over their children. In Windrush families, south Asian families and west African families, we have this concept of leaving children behind. The first came when they were over the age of 18, and now large numbers of their children are the ones caught up in the system and using article 8 to remain. Those are the sorts of people we would be targeting. This is their home. They are settled here. The numbers are small. It is not yet clear to me why we need to be doing this.

[Anna Turley]

Q Thank you both for joining us. I want to refer back to the example you gave of the online case that you joined by mistake, where something had got to a judge that was a result of poor decision making. Does that not make the case for the IIAA, in that it was a waste of a judge’s time to have gone through that process? Having a quicker appeals process would have enabled that to be seen quickly and dealt with much more effectively. Building on that point, we have seen a 21% increase in the amount of investment and judges dealing with tribunal appeals, yet the rate of appeals and the waiting time are still going up. Surely, you must admit that there is an issue with the backlog, the time it takes and the small pool of people we have to draw from.

Jacqui McKenzie: I think I might have confused the point. There are two separate things. The point I was making about the man from Iraq was about the lack of representation. That lack of representation, and people coming unprepared to do their appeals, causes judges’ time and the entire tribunal’s time to be wasted. That goes out of the system and it comes back in. The poor decision making is a separate thing. I do not know whether the refusal of that man, which brought him into the appellate system, was a good decision or not. We did not get round to that bit, but we see considerable poor decision making.

I work quite a lot with the Windrush community. We keep seeing in the news, “They’re waiting for the Windrush generation to die.” I do not think that is true at all—I do not think the Home Office is that sinister—but we are seeing very straightforward cases taking two or three years to come to conclusion. The whole reason for that is the poor decision making. You get cases where the first decision is a zero, and then it goes up to six figures after two or three reviews. We are dealing with an elderly cohort, and these reviews go on for years and retraumatise the victims.

I see the same sort of thing across my practice: poor decision making on a number of things, including human rights applications and asylum claims. I do not know how, unless things are improved in the first instance, we will reduce the backlog in either the existing tribunal system or the new appellate authority.

Professor Singer: Just to clarify, that is bad quality initial Home Office decision making, as opposed to adjudicator decisions.

Jacqui McKenzie: Home Office decisions, yes, absolutely.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Vickers]

Q What impact do you expect the financial penalties for companies that fail to comply with the reporting requirements to have on company compliance?

Dr Buttle: As I say, we have been evaluating companies’ modern slavery statements for three or four years now. There is also another investor coalition that we are part of, which is Rathbones’ Votes Against Slavery initiative. That has identified 194 instances of companies in the FTSE 350 not complying with section 54 over the past six years. That is quite widespread and companies are not actually complying. In our benchmarking work, we have identified some of the largest companies in the world that have exposure to modern slavery. They operate in high-risk geographies. They have supply chains that reach into high-risk geographies and they are in sectors that we deem high risk that are not currently complying with section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act. So we do think there is a risk at the moment, and we think that financial penalties would mean there is a risk of not complying with the legislation. On the way that the Bill introduces penalties of £1 million or up to 1% of turnover, that should be sufficient to make businesses consider this more seriously.

[Anna Turley]

Q That was the question I wanted to ask: will this have the intended effect? Where businesses are not complying with transparency in supply chains, do you think the financial penalty will encourage greater compliance?

Dr Buttle: I think it will, but the other thing to note is that there has not been very much enforcement by the Home Office of the Modern Slavery Act in the past. In addition to the penalties, we need some enforcement by a body; we would consider that in future that may not be the Home Office, and that the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade might be a better place to enforce this. If there is no enforcement, companies may still consider not complying with the regulations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Vickers]

Q Do you think there will be any significant effect from the proposed article 8 changes, or do you think we will just see everything coming back on different legal grounds?

Stephen Webb: You obviously have a combination of both the article 8 definitions and the decision-making body, with a new appeals structure. The appeals structure could be very helpful. There is a significant problem of public confidence in the immigration tribunals as they stand, so I welcome the Government’s measures essentially to phase that out.

It is very hard to say how decision makers and people on appeal are going to interpret this. There clearly is a toughening-up here, certainly on article 8. There is nothing at the moment that does much on article 3 claims, which, as the Committee knows, have been broadened very widely by the courts over the last 20 years into things like whether there is an equivalent health system in the host country and the receiving country, and into areas that are really quite surprising for something that is supposed to be an unqualified right.

[Anna Turley]

Q Could you say a little more about where you think the IIAA will have an impact on improving public confidence in the appeals process?

Stephen Webb: The problem with the immigration tribunals at the moment is that the reporting on judgments, in some cases, has been pretty shocking. The judiciary have not helped themselves in the way that most first-tier judgments are not routinely available. The only time you really hear about them is when they go up on appeal and are quite often turned down. The point about the famous chicken nuggets case is that it was not actually upheld on appeal. It was turned down, but it gave people a taste of the sort of things that might be happening in the tribunals. Obviously, there are recorded cases of tribunal judges coming from quite an activist background, which again seems very odd—I think the public would not expect that.

From that point of view, there is an opportunity to reset and to have clear rules about impartiality. There is also considerable scope to speed things up, which will definitely be helpful. Certainly, a lot of cases are lost because of the time it takes to get to a hearing, so people can build a case. Maybe they will get involved, rightly or wrongly, genuinely or not, in making a political case. Maybe they will create it. They might start developing religious reasons or, indeed, article 8 reasons related to relationships formed in the country. The quicker a decision is made, the more likely it is that it will be rapidly upheld at that first stage. Those are all positives. It is going to be a big process to find these people—identifying them, training them and getting them ready—but in principle, I think it is a good idea.