Free Movement Weekly Immigration Newsletter #42

Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter!

Last week the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee published a report looking at several regulations including the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment) Order 2024, part of which is now in force. It appears that the regulations were laid at least in part because applicants have been charged fees without the statutory authority to do so and the House of Lords were understandably unimpressed that this information was missing from the explanatory memorandum. The relevant fees were paid to Ecctis Limited (formerly UK Naric).

The committee notes that the Home Office has not provided an estimate of the amount of fees unlawfully charged but they can see from evidence previously received “that fees have been charged since 2008 and, while complete data was not then available, the contractor’s revenue over the last three years was “in the region of £50 million””. It seems the government may intend to introduce legislation with retrospective effect to avoid the need to repay the fees, you can read the correspondence between the committee and the minister for more details.

Multiple deaths were reported last week of people who were trying to cross the Channel, on Wednesday and Sunday. As ever, the government response referred only to people smuggling gangs, rather than alternatives for people to making that deadly journey. 

We have a bit more information on eVisas for refugees and the move on period will work, via a written question in the House of Lords. To state the obvious, this is not how such important information should be conveyed. The response does say that more information will be provided before the Home Office stops issuing BRPs, which is Thursday this week.

In April this year I wrote up the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration’s report on deprivation of citizenship which uncovered hundreds of stalled Albanian cases. I have now heard that at least some of these seem to be on the move again and people are receiving notices of investigation into deprivation. So if you have any clients in this situation do be alert and ready. Apparently re-reading my article has been useful to those working on these cases, so you may want to do that.

On Free Movement, we have updated our online training member’s course on representing children in the immigration tribunal. Colin and I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to parse various Law Society documents to figure out what is happening with reaccreditation for their immigration and asylum scheme and have written that up, along with some of our resources that may help. We also had this really interesting piece from Yumna Kamel looking at advancing legal rights in the context of climate and disaster displacement. 

There were also a few case write ups last week – Jack Freeland has written up the latest care home licence revocation case and I still don’t even know what to say about this Court of Appeal case with a four year administrative delay. For everything else on Free Movement and elsewhere, read on.

Cheers, Sonia

What we’re reading

How an English extremist with a Hitler tattoo hid in plain sight – and plotted to kill – The Observer, 27 October

New report sets out why all slavery survivors must have the right to work in the National Referral Mechanism – Kalayaan, 23 October

Closing the Loophole: Exploitation of Migrant Fishing Workers – Focus on Labour Exploitation, 23 October

Yvette Cooper reinstates Home Office unit for post-Windrush culture change – The Guardian, 24 October

Fishermen on Scots trawler win £20,000 modern slavery claim – BBC News, 24 October

A prime minister defending immigration? It can happen. It just did here in Spain – The Guardian, 25 October

Seasonal worker visas are tying migrants into exploitation – openDemocracy, 22 October

What’s behind the sudden decline in immigration to the UK? UK in a Changing Europe, 24 October

Fair and Fast Asylum Processing: Lessons from Switzerland – Just Security, 24 October

Linguist calls for London’s endangered language communities to be mapped – The Guardian, 26 October