Tag: Home Office
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Joe Tomlinson: Why Has There Been a 264% Increase in Asylum Appeals?
If an application for asylum is refused, the applicant can appeal to the First-tier Tribunal. The latest tribunal statistics show a sharp increase in the number of asylum appeals lodged in the tribunal. In the year 2023/2024, there were 29,172 appeals lodged, which can be compared to 8,019 appeals lodged during the previous year—a 264%…
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Lewis Graham: Paused Policies, Secret Policies and the Rule of Law: XY v Secretary of State for the Home Department
It is hard to think of a concept with a more contested definition in legal and political circles than “the rule of law”. The question of what content (if any) might be found within it (and indeed, what “it” even is – a political truth? A normative ideal? A mere slogan?) has been taken up,…
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James Robottom: The State’s Legal Duty to Hold an Independent Inquiry into the Mass Disappearance of Asylum Seeking Children in its Care
The disappearance of hundreds of asylum seeking children out of Home Office run hotels is an issue of acute national concern. After the Observer reported on 21 January 2023 that “[d]ozens of asylum-seeking children ha[d] been kidnapped by gangs from a Brighton hotel run by the Home Office in a pattern apparently being repeated across the south…
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Elizabeth A. O’Loughlin, Gabriel Tan and Cassandra Somers-Joce: The Duty of Candour in Judicial Review: The Case of the Lost Policy
Earlier this year, in a Divisional Court judgment that garnered much attention from public lawyers, the Home Office conceded that its secret and blanket policy of seizing and downloading data from the mobile phones of all those arriving by small boats was unlawful: R (HM, MA and KH) v Secretary of State for the Home…
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Alastair Richardson: The Legality of Home Office Fees
Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens v Secretary of State for the Home Department (PRCBC) concerned a challenge to the lawfulness of fees charged to children applying to be registered as British citizens. The fees have a serious adverse impact on the ability of many children to apply for registration. As David Richards…
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Alison Young: Towards an Expository Justice Approach to Human Rights Adudication?
The recent Supreme Court Case of R (Johnson) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, [2016] UKSC 56, appears at first glance to be a straightforward human rights claim. Lady Hale, giving the agreed judgment of the court, concluded that Johnson’s Convention rights had been breached. Because of the specific nature of the challenge brought by…
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Byron Karemba: The Investigatory Powers Bill: Putting the Investigatory Powers Commissioner in Focus (Part II)
Following on from the first post focusing on the double-lock in the Investigatory Powers Bill (“the Bill”). This second entry looks at the “institutional and procedural” issues around the introduction of judicial scrutiny of surveillance warrants in the UK. Therefore, attention is on the office of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner (IPCr) itself. I will assess…
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Farrah Ahmed and Adam Perry: Judicial Review of Shariah Councils
On 23 March, Theresa May announced plans for a review of shariah councils in England and Wales, to examine their compatibility with British values, if the Conservatives win the May election. Shariah councils are bodies that issue divorce certificates for Islamic marriages, offer mediation and reconciliation services to couples married under religious law, and produce…