A barrister … must promote and protect fearlessly and by all proper and lawful means the lay client’s best interests and do so without regard to his own interests or to any consequences to himself or to any other person (para 302, Code of Conduct of the Bar of England & Wales)...
“I agree with my noble friend that no area is more complex than the whole business of the Immigration Rules and the procedures surrounding them.” Lord Taylor of Holbeach in response to Lord Lester of Herne Hill, Hansard, 12 December 2012: Column 1087 (with thanks to Alison from ILPA).
...The reported Upper Tribunal case of Kalidas (agreed facts – best practice) [2012] UKUT 00327 (IAC) underscores some important points of practice and procedure in the First Tier Tribunal (FTT). The case concerned an appeal before the FTT where it appears to have been agreed between the Appellant and Respondent...
There has been a lot of media coverage of judicial review applications in the last few days, as most readers will no doubt have noticed. The Government has announced plans to (a) reduce the time limit for judicial review from three months, (b) increase the court fees for bringing a...
The President of the Queens Bench Division, Sir John Thomas, has issued a dire warning to solicitors applying for last minute judicial reviews and injunctions in immigration cases. The comments come in the case of R (on the application of Hamid) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012]...
The Centre for the Study of Emotion and Law (CSEL) has recently collaborated in a new article Non-clinicians’ judgments about asylum seekers’ mental health: how do legal representatives of asylum seekers decide when to request medico-legal reports? by Lucy Wilson-Shaw, Nancy Pistrang and Jane Herlihy, which considers decisions made by...
Imprisoned lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and banned film maker Jafar Panahi have been awarded the Sakharav Prize. The Sakharav Prize, named after the Soviet scientist and dissident, is an annual prize, awarded by the European Parliament to individuals or organisations fighting for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Nasrin Sotoudeh is currently...
The UK Border Agency has taken to using social media to proclaim its propaganda on the ongoing purge of illegal immigrants from the United Kingdom. Conventional press releases are no longer sufficient. Free Movement has already covered the use of YouTube (see latest bizarre video here). Now Twitter, Storify and Flickr...
In the case of HJ (Iran) [2011] 1 AC 596 (post here) the Supreme Court held that self oppression can be persecution. To put it another way, being forced to conceal a Convention reason protected characteristic (sexuality, political opinion, religious faith and so on) would itself be persecutory. This self oppression...
It will not have escaped the attention of immigration barristers in London that there are some very fresh faces in court acting for the Home Office. ‘Operation Present’ is back, sort of, with the Home Office having recruited a bunch of junior barristers to ensure no case goes uncovered. Free...
I say ‘Tomato’, interpreter says ‘Potato’. I say ‘Potato’, interpreter says ‘Tomato’. Tomato. Potato. Potato? Tomato? Everyone thinks I’ve given inconsistent evidence, my credibility is shot to pieces, I’ve lost my case. Applied Language Solutions, the agency who won the Ministry of Justice’s contract to supply all courts and tribunals...
The Legal Services Board has issued a consultation paper that proposes potentially major changes to the regulation of immigration advice and services. The deadline for responses is 24 May 2011. The LSB is critical of the current regulatory regime, saying of their own investigation into the immigration market in 2011:...
Regular readers will know that Free Movement practises from Renaissance Chambers, as do the other contributors to the blog. We have been expanding our immigration team at Renaissance over the last few months and have now also relaunched our website. Last night was one of our periodic immigration lectures (more...
Theresa May and David Cameron have promised to crack down on the perversion of human rights. May specifically stated that she wanted to amend the Immigration Rules to do so. Some of this is no doubt pure politics of the dogwhistle variety: it will not necessarily be followed by new...
In his speech on Monday addressing the long term causes behind the recent looting, David Cameron blamed the State. The communities that erupted need less help, not more, it would seem. In some classic post-Blair, verb-free rhetoric, Cameron recited some rather tired soundbites (communities, rights, responsibilities, the usual). He also blamed...
It turns out that the muppets* at the Ministry of Justice have laid regulations that at first glance appear to forbid English and Welsh barristers and solicitors from appearing in the immigration tribunal in Scotland and Northern Ireland but which permit Scottish and Northern Irish equivalents to appear in England...
I’m currently working on materials for a general immigration update course for HJT Training, taking place this Wednesday, 18th May. Click here to book if you are interested. As well as things I’ve already covered here on Free Movement I’ve learned a few interesting things from reading through Statements of...
The recent scrapping of the old AIT website has rendered my old page of links to procedure rules and practice directions out of date. I found it useful myself, so here are a replacement list of useful links sourced from the new Ministry of Justice, Judiciary, Tribunals and legacy AIT...
Last week was the annual Renaissance Chambers immigration lecture, and I promised to post up the notes and slides from the talks. It has been such a busy week that I haven’t even had time to accomplish that, for which I apologise. We all thought it went very well, and...
As you may be aware, the deadline for responding within the Legal Aid Proposed Cuts consultation is imminent i.e. 12pm 14.02.2011. If you have not done so already, may I urge all legal aid firms, not-for-profit organisations and supporters of legal aid generally to send in their responses. I will...
With New Year Celebrations follow the dreaded New Year Resolutions, well for most of us anyway… And so this year, it is my task today to remind and urge as many of you as possible to respond within the consultation to the Green Paper proposing drastic cuts in legal aid. ...
I thought I’d start putting together a list of the myriad ways in which the Home Office wastes money (mainly public funds, also private sometimes) in the small world of immigration. It makes my blood boil that legal aid is being brutally slashed in immigration and across the whole area of...
The tragic demise of Refugee and Migrant Justice, formerly known as the Refugee Legal Centre, leaves a gaping and unfillable void in the immigration sector. With its higher than average success rate and top notch training and nurturing programme for asylum lawyers, it is simply irreplaceable. What happened? I start...
I’ve been silent on this so far for fear of losing my rag. There is much distress still, and criticism of the administrators seems to be growing. Alan George and George Joffe are seeking to hold the Legal Services Commission directly responsible for payment for their unpaid expert reports and...
I re-Tweeted this a few days ago but thought it was worth highlighting for those who (arguably sensibly) do not follow the Free Movement Twitter account. The Times reported a case called Richard Buxton (Solicitors) v Mills-Owens & Anor [2010] EWCA Civ 122 in which the Court of Appeal held that...
A sign of things to come: Following the UK general election on 6 May 2010, the UK Border Agency website has undergone some changes. All news stories published before April 2010 have been removed from this website, as has information about our strategies and aims under the previous government. This...
[UPDATE: The ‘Lib’ ‘Dems’ have agreed to a cap on non-EU immigration as part of the coalition deal. So, if too many people bring spouses and children in, the rest will have to wait until next year, and multi-national businesses will not be able to transfer employees to the UK?...
Today seems an auspicious day to examine Labour’s recent immigration history. At first glance it may appear that Labour has been generous on immigration policy in recent times. In some respects this is right. Immigration has certainly increased since 1997. As Don Flynn wrote so perceptively in 2002 in Tough...
There was another story on the scarcity of Home Office Presenting Officers, this time in The Sunday Times. I’ve blogged about this before. They do seem to be a bit of an endangered species at the moment, and unlike most animals on the endangered list also seem to be well...
A sea change is needed on the detention of foreign nationals in the United Kingdom. Periods of detention have grown and grown in recent years. The Home Office never ask ‘should we detain this person’, they merely ask ‘can we detain this person.’ In a civilised country, the ultimate sanction...
The Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC) is currently consulting on the regulation of immigration advisers. Or, more accurately, the de-regulation of immigration advisers. It is illegal to give immigration advice in the UK unless the adviser is a member of an exempted profession (mainly solicitors and barristers) or...
This Hello! style headline is perhaps the clearest sign yet that the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal will be abolished and amalgamated into the unified tribunal. The Home Office planning documents now state that the AIT will be scrapped, the AIT stakeholder meetings keep getting postponed and now the President of...
Someone brought this job advert to my attention. It’s been fun writing this blog and representing immigrants and asylum seekers, but duty calls. You have to be part of it to change it, as Steve Cohen undoubtedly would not have said. I’m confident I’ll get the job and very much look...
This post is definitely one for other immigration lawyers. Anyone else will be left thinking ‘diddums!’ There is an ugly rumour abroad that immigration judges at Taylor House doing the CMR list are going to start sending two cases a day to be heard at Yarl’s Wood detention centre near...
Well, this is a bit of a surprise. “Cameron, David” has lodged an Early Day Motion opposing the latest change in the immigration rules (both latest changes: typically, the first set were badly drafted and needed almost instant amendment after publication). Thanks to John O at NCADC for spotting this development....
UPDATE 19/4/09: The Home Office has stopped charging for Certificates of Approval. They say their policy is under review and they say they are “carefully considering the implications for those who have already paid a fee and will shortly announce its policy in this respect”. More to follow when anything...
A little too reminiscent of Cromwell’s New Model Army, perhaps, the New Asylum Model is supposed to herald a new age of high quality Home Office asylum decision making. The Home Office already seem to have stopped referring to it as being New, but as with ‘New Labour’ it may prove difficult to...
