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Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association on the effect of proposed UK anti-terrorism laws

01 August 2001

The Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA) have sent a strongly worded submission to the UK parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee expressing “profound concerns at the linkage between anti-terrorism measures and the immigration and asylum systems”.
Their submission covers four aspects of the proposed legal changes. First, the removal of access to judicial review for immigration appeals which it says is “fundamentally misconceived”.
Second, the rejection of asylum claims where a person is “certified” to be a “threat” to national security. It recalls the wide use of deportation orders (on the basis of security services information) leading to the detention of many Iraqis and others from the Middle East during the Iraq-Kuwait war “none of whom were deported because they were never in fact a risk to national security”.
Third, the detention of “suspected” terrorists who cannot be deported for indefinite periods. ILPA opposes the proposed UK derogation from Article 15 of the ECHR and says powers already exist to bring such people to trail: “it is hard to see how administrative detention as opposed to prosecution can ever be justified”.
Fourth, ILPA says the the proposed European arrest warrant would abolish due process and see “no justification whatsoever for the abolition of the political offence” and says that the proposal “would circumvent the proper application of an asylum procedure”.

info@ilpa.org.uk