Clause 10 - Unification of appeal system
Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill
9:45 am
Mr Humfrey Malins (Woking, Conservative)
The Minister, whom I welcome to these debates, talked a moment or two ago about the Government's purpose. I shall tell him in the shortest possible way the Government's purpose. Instead of focusing on their own shortcomings and on administrative matters, which a proper Government could deal with quite easily, they seek to blame everything on lawyers, the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords by ousting their jurisdiction, as if that will cure the problem. It will not.
I shall keep my introductory remarks relatively brief compared with the Minister's. Clause 10 is the most significant clause in the Bill, and in any asylum Bill that I can remember. It is as well to understand exactly what it does. First, it protects all decisions of the single-tier, new appellate authority from either judicial review or appeal to any higher court. Secondly, it protects from any judicial scrutiny a decision to deport a person from the United Kingdom, or any action in connection with such a decision.
The clause has been described by 16 members of Matrix Chambers—not including Cherie Booth, I imagine—as the most draconian ouster clause ever seen in parliamentary legislative practice. It has been roundly condemned by many respected organisations, including the General Council of the Bar, the Law Society, the Immigration Law Practitioners Association, the Refugee Council and the Immigration Advisory Service, which I had the honour of founding. It has been described by one senior judge as a clause that would
''no doubt appeal to Mr. Mugabe.''