Government appeal system for processing asylum seekers’ applications, which has been in use for a decade, must be quashed, high court rules
A fast-track immigration appeals procedure under which thousands of asylum seekers have been locked up each year has been declared unlawful by the high court.
Mr Justice Nichol said the process under which rejected asylum seekers arriving in Britain are detained and given seven days to appeal was “structurally unfair”.
The judge said the rules put asylum seekers “at a serious procedural disadvantage” and said it “looks uncomfortably akin to … sacrificing fairness on the altar of speed and convenience”.
[…]Jerome Phelps, the director of Detention Action, which brought the legal challenge, said he was pleased that the appeals process had been found to be not just unlawful but also ultra vires.
[…]
Alan Travis Home affairs editor,
For further information:
- Detention Action: High Court quashes Detained Fast Track asylum appeals process, 12 June 2015
- British Refugee Council: Detained fast track appeal system ruled unlawful, 12 June 2015
- EDAL: UK High Court finds appeals procedures on the ‘Detained Fast Track’ unlawful, 18 June 2015
- AIDA: UK Country Report – Accelerated Procedures, January 2015