Clause 10 - Unification of appeal system
Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Mark Oaten (Winchester, Liberal Democrat)
I am grateful to the Minister for adding a third category. The two that I wanted to cite were the Special Immigration Appeals Commission and, in particular, the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission. I can see a case for taking away the ability to go to a second appeal where the issues are so sensitive. His responsibility this afternoon is to convince the Committee that the argument for taking away the right of appeal in these cases is similar to issues of national security. I cannot see that there is any case for the Government to make to put this on the same level. If it is not for cases of national security, it must clearly be for pragmatic reasons.
The Government want to change a fundamental principle for the sake of administrative convenience. They want to speed up the process, for practical reasons, and remove a current principle of law.
I do not take any credit for this quotation, as we have all had it in our briefings, but it is worth drawing to the Committee's attention. The Prime Minster, when he was shadow Home Secretary some years ago, said:
''It is a novel, bizarre and misguided principle of the legal system that if the exercise of legal rights is causing administrative inconvenience, the solution is to remove that right.''—[Official Report, 2 November 1992; Vol. 213, c. 43.]
I could not agree more. It was absolutely right then to raise concerns about the principle of deciding that the way to solve a problem was to do away with a legal right. We believe that the problem could have been solved in other ways and not, as the Prime Minister said seven or eight years ago, by taking away legal rights.