Following a seven-day hearing in the High Court, Mr Felix Wamala, a Ugandan national, was awarded £48,000 in damages for the actions of private security guards contracted by the Home Office in seeking to remove him from the UK. This is the case of Wamala v Tascor Services Ltd [2017] EWHC 1461. The judgment is a mammoth one, weighing in at 558 paragraphs plus annexes. Mr Wamala’s claim concerned the use of force, and the threatened use of force, against him by employees of Reliance, now known as Tascor Services Ltd. Tascor is a subsidiary of Capita. As they say on their website: As part of Capita PLC, we have the…

For some reason the Home Office has just released a swathe of inspection reports into a wide range of Home Office operations. In practical terms, this makes it impossible for the press to pick out more than one or two stories from the reports and it therefore very effectively reduces scrutiny. Usually I have nothing better to do than sit and read these reports when they are hot off the press (!) but 10 in two days seems excessive even to me I cannot stir myself to read all of them. It is almost as if there is something to hide somewhere in there. Nevertheless, I am going to confine…

After more than a decade since Limbuela, and three years after Refugee Action, Home Office policy continues to drive asylum seekers into destitution. The Refugee Action report, Slipping Through the Cracks, candidly outlines these failings of the asylum support system. This is hardly the first time these sorts of flaws have been exposed. The whole report features real stories and quotes from the asylum seekers let down by the process, and is well worth a read. The first problem is the decrease in support level over time. Rates used to be set at 70% of mainstream benefits. This meagre level seems princely compared to the current non-emergency (“Section 95”) support…

The Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) has published its annual review of the treatment of returnees during charter flights. It reported four headline concerns: firstly, that force and restraint had been used without due checks and for too long; secondly, that escorts employed by contractors were in charge of selecting which returnees may speak to the Chief Immigration Officer for advice on their legal rights during the flight, and that on one flight the advice itself was delegated to the escorts; thirdly that returnees were taken to Stansted Airport at night on certain flights; and finally that those who wished to use the toilet either on the coach or the aeroplane…

The Home Office this week published a new policy setting out the terms of a 12 month immigration “amnesty” for survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire. In short, the Government is offering a grant (or extension) of 12 months leave to enter or remain with access public funds included as well as the right to work. Applications must be made before 31 August 2017. There is no formal application form that must be used and no fee is payable, nor is the Immigration Health Surcharge. This policy is additional to the Government’s previous assurance that immigration checks will not be carried out on Grenfell Tower survivors, an assurance reiterated in…

Under the British Nationality Act 1981, a child who is born in the UK and is (and always has been) stateless is entitled to register as a British citizen. See Schedule 2, Paragraph 3: 3 (1) A person born in the United Kingdom or a British overseas territory after commencement shall be entitled, on an application for his registration under this paragraph, to be so registered if the following requirements are satisfied in his case, namely— (a) that he is and always has been stateless; and (b) that on the date of the application he was under the age of twenty-two; and (c) that he was in the United Kingdom…