Detention illegal?
01 January 1995
There was a flurry of activity in the Home Office in January when the High Court ruled that the detention of illegal entrants who had claimed asylum was unlawful. It was estimated that about 500 asylum-seekers were being held unlawfully. Immigration officers can detain arrivals to Britain for questioning before allowing them in. They can also detain illegal entrants in order to remove them from the country. But asylum-seekers can't be removed, and those already in the country can't be detained under administrative powers for questioning, ruled Mr Justice Dyson.
The government's visa restrictions and carrier sanctions, which between them make it impossible for refugees to travel legally to the UK, have resulted in the rapid growth of illegal ways of getting in to the country. Some present themselves as visitors, with false documents, others are smuggled in by boat or lorry. They then claim asylum once inside the country. This, in turn, has led to the rapid increase in the numbers of asylum-seekers held in detention, since anyone who has come in using a false identity or false documents, or who has come in clandestinely, is deemed likely to abscond by the Home Office. Thus, 650 asylum-seekers were held in detention at the end of 1994, compared with about 300 in mid-1993, and a total of 11,000 were detained in the course of the year. In December the government announced plans for three new detention centres, at Gatwick, Heathrow and Stansted, to hold an extra 270 people.
The Home Office appealed against Mr Justice Dyson's ruling, and was able to get a hearing in the Court of Appeal in under a week. On 3 February the Court of Appeal overturned his decision, giving the Home Office a green light on the detention of asylum-seekers. Refugee groups reacted angrily to the Court of Appeal decision, maintaining that detention of asylum-seekers is arbitrary, punitive and inhuman. They point to statistics showing that those detained are just as likely to be recognised as refugees as those allowed to stay with family, friends or in hostels pending the decision on their status. The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and Justice are submitting a report to the UN Human Rights Committee on Britain's "appalling" treatment of asylum-seekers.
"Somaligate"?
The speed with which the Home Office was able to get an unfavourable ruling overturned was also pointed to by angry lawyers and refugee groups and contrasted with the snails-pace progress of appeals against refusal of entry to the UK. In particular, hundreds of cases of Somali families in refugee camps, who have been refused permission to join relatives in the UK, have been stalled for over two years - the Home Office puts every conceivable bureaucratic and legal obstacle in the way of the appeals. Meanwhile, those awaiting their appeals are dying of disease and malnutrition. Some lawyers believe that the Home Office-inspired delays are a scandal on a par with the Danish "Tamilgate", which led to the resignation of the prime minister and brought down the government after revelations that Tamil family reunion was deliberately delayed.