Back in the heady days of 2019, journalist Jon Stone started what turned out to be a very long thread on Twitter. Over and over and over again, he wrote “Abolish the Home Office”. Every tweet linked to example after example after example of appalling conduct by officials at the...
Figures the Ministry of Justice was instructed to publish by the Office for Statistics Regulation show that just 8% of all deportation appeals lodged in 2020/21 were allowed on human rights grounds only. The one-off statistical release follows from the consultation on Dominic Raab’s proposed Bill of Rights Act, which...
Welcome to the October 2022 episode of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month, Colin and Sonia talk politics, asylum, the statement of changes to the immigration rules and case law. The episode is a bit longer than usual as there was a lot going on! If you would...
A new report has been published this morning by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons on the controversial short term holding facility for refugees at Manston in Kent. The inspection took place in late July 2022, before the current Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, is reported to have prevented hotel bookings that...
Small boat crossings attract a lot of media and political attention. The images we see of refugees arriving on our shores clearly upset some people. The Conservative Member of Parliament for Dover and Deal in successive tweets, for example, says crossings are “no refugee crisis… but simply illegal immigration” and...
Welcome to the September 2022 episode of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month I am joined again by “immigration lawyer about town”, as she put it, Sonia Lenegan. She is in danger of becoming a co-presenter if she carries on like this… Amongst other things, we talk about...
Suella Braverman’s speech to the Conservative Party conference yesterday evening confirmed two things. She really doesn’t like the Human Rights Act, the Modern Slavery Act or the European Court of Human Rights. And that the problems with the UK immigration system are complex and intense. One of these problems is...
In a bizarrely unhinged interview with the Sun on Sunday, Home Secretary Suella Braverman has laid into modern slavery victims and the family members of postgraduate students. These two unlikely groups are apparently the latest bogeymen to be stopping Britain from being great again. Promising “dramatic action” to stop small...
It is now twenty two years since I first started work as an asylum lawyer at the Oakington detention centre, a converted former barracks near Cambridge. I have seen a lot of change to the asylum system in that time. But many of the changes have ultimately been superficial. The...
