Home Office spent £36m fighting immigration judicial reviews last year

The Government is bringing forward new laws which will force judges to place more weight on asylum seekers’ criminal records

Embargoed until 6PM 3 Dec 2020 .
Home Secretary Priti Patel accompanied Immigration Enforcement Officers on an early morning arrest in north London of a suspected suspected of having a significant financial role in an organised crime group linked to people smuggling activity.
The 36-year-old is the 14th person to be arrested as part of a wider ongoing investigation into this suspected organised crime group, which is believed to have been involved in more than 600 migrant crossings in May alone.
Home Office Criminal and Financial Investigations teams have made 111 arrests linked to small boats criminality, 56 were for facilitating individuals and 55 were for those entering the UK illegally.
London 3 December 2020
Credit: Heathcliff O'Malley/The Telegraph

The Home Office was forced to spend almost £36 million of taxpayers’ money fighting judicial reviews related to immigration cases last year, it has emerged, as Priti Patel prepares to bring in new laws to stop “endless vexatious claims". 

According to internal figures obtained by The Telegraph, the department is also currently dealing with over 3,600 challenges to immigation cases, reigniting calls for reform of the system. 

It comes after a series of deportation flights scheduled to take place in recent months to remove migrants – including convicted criminals – were impacted by last-minute legal challenges. 

Similar challenges have taken place with migrants who have crossed the English Channel, with the UK recording seven times as many arrivals this year compared to the 12 months previous. 

In response, the Government is bringing forward new laws which will force judges to place more weight on asylum seekers’ criminal records.

Ms Patel is also pushing ahead with a wider reform of the asylum system to tackle “litigious” human rights claimants who seek to delay their deportation from Britain after their cases are refused.

Priti Patel discusses a deal with France to curb migrant Channel crossings in late November: 

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A Whitehall source told The Telegraph that the latest costs incurred by the Home Office, which include counsel fees and the legal fees paid out, “show just how crocked our asylum system is". 

They added: “There are no winners from an asylum system which leaves vulnerable people waiting for years to have a claim processed through the courts whilst taxpayer’s pick up the ever-growing bill. 

“That’s why we will bring forward legislation to fix this broken system”

Meanwhile, a leading Oxford University academic, who is considered highly influential on Downing Street, has this week submitted evidence to a Government-commissioned review arguing that judicial reviews should be reformed. 

In his paper, Prof Richard Ekins, who also heads the Policy Exchange think tank’s Judicial Power Project, argues that the expansion of judicial review has unsettled “the balance of our constitution and threatens to compromise parliamentary democracy, the rule of law, and effective government". 

While Prof Ekins notes that this “inflation” has partly arisen due to human rights laws and “European integration”, he adds that it has also been fuelled by the way that judges have developed the law and “interpreted statutory powers". 

He goes on to argue that the expert panel leading the review, chaired by the former Conservative justice minister Lord Faulks, should “affirm that Parliament is constitutionally entitled to evaluate the law of judicial review and to intervene to correct it". 

“In recent years, judicial review has been extended widely and deployed aggressively – there are strong reasons to legislate to address its reach, restoring the principled limits that earlier generations of judges recognised,” he adds. 

In a foreword to the paper, Lord Howard, the former Conservative leader, writes: “Of course no-one is proposing the abolition of judicial review. It clearly plays an indispensable role in upholding the rule of law. But there are legitimate questions about its proper scope.

“Who is to have the final say on the laws which govern us? Is it to be Parliament, traditional repository of sovereignty, and, at least as far as the House of Commons is concerned, democratically elected and so accountable to the people, or the judges of the Supreme Court, unelected and the product of a process which resembles a self-perpetuating oligarchy?

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