This is a preview of Migration Watch’s free weekly newsletter. Please consider signing up to the newsletter directly, you can do so here and will receive an email copy of the newsletter every week as soon as it is released.
Recently, a High Court ruled that Epping Forest District Council could close a hotel in Epping which had been commandeered by the Home Office to house asylum seekers, on the grounds that it posed a danger to nearby residents and was a breach of the hotel’s approved conditions of use under local planning law.
Lawyers acting on behalf of the Home Office and the accommodation contractor, Somani Hotels, challenged this decision in the Court of Appeals – arguing that the safety of local people in Epping was less important that ensuring asylum seekers. Mr Ed Brown, KC, claimed, “There is a national interest in ensuring vulnerable individuals, namely asylum seekers, are accommodated.“ The Telegraph also reports a lawyer claimed the relevant public interests are “fundamentally different in nature”, meaning the rights of asylum seekers under the European Convention on Human Rights take priority.
This is obviously an absurd argument which places the interests of migrants above those of citizens. If, for some reason, you became homeless or destitute, do you think the government would hire expensive lawyers to argue for your rights?
Staggeringly, in the last few minutes the Court of Appeals has published their judgement: siding with the Home Office and establishing the precedent that asylum hotels must remain open, even if they pose an unacceptable risk to British citizens living nearby.
This is a direct consequence of our political and judicial class treating the European Convention on Human Rights, and by extension the 1998 Human Rights Act, as sacrosanct. Despite a clear change in circumstances, and mountains of evidence of abuse, they insist on sticking to the letter of a document written for a different century.
As Migration Watch has argued, leaving the ECHR is absolutely essential – and we anticipate the voices arguing for this will become even louder in the coming days.
This is a preview of Migration Watch’s free weekly newsletter. Please consider signing up to the newsletter directly, you can do so here and will receive an email copy of the newsletter every week as soon as it is released.