Court of Appeal judges give go ahead for flight taking first migrants to Rwanda

Court of Appeal judges have rejected a last-ditch legal bid to block a flight due to relocate asylum seekers to Rwanda tomorrow.

The news means the flight will almost certainly go ahead, although a legal challenge from the individuals due to be on board is still pending. 

Around 100 people were originally notified they were due for deportation under the policy, dropping to 31 on Friday after a wave of litigation and the total now barely in double digits.

The first flight is due to leave tomorrow. Brook House removal centre near Gatwick has been a focus of protests against the policy, and today inmates were seen waving at photographers.  

Brook House – pictured today – is privately operated by Serco on behalf of the Home Office 

Migrants waved at photographers from behind the metal fences surrounding the centre 

Raza Husain QC said the policy featured ‘a serious interference with basic dignity’ and that the High Court judge had wrongly assessed the strength of their claim.

He said in written submissions: ‘The policy presently involves executive detention, forcible removal from the jurisdiction, transportation to a country from which they have not sought protection and to which they do not wish to go, in circumstances where the individuals concerned are exercising a legal right; and their removal is intended to deter others.

‘This amounts, on any view, to a serious interference with basic dignity… where those individuals have already suffered significant trauma and have mental health issues.’

Mr Husain argued that the High Court judge who refused to block the flight on Friday, Mr Justice Swift, had wrongly decided the ‘balance of convenience’. 

The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) – which represents more than 80 per cent of Border Force staff – joined with Care4Calais and Detention Action to challenge Friday’s High Court ruling that the first flight to the east African country could go ahead. 

Priti Patel – pictured at the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations – is seeking to defend her flagship policy against a raft of legal challenges 

He said in written submissions: ‘If interim relief is refused and the claim succeeds, each claimant will be entitled to a ‘bring back’ order.

‘If it is possible to bring the individuals back, which it may not be, this will have very significant administrative cost.

‘Every individual who has been forcibly removed is also likely to have significant claims for damages… This potential cost to the taxpayer, in itself outweighs any inconvenience of a six-week delay pending removal pending trial.’

The Home Office has defended the policy.

Rory Dunlop QC, for the department, said: ‘The flight tomorrow is important.

‘This is a policy which is intended to deter dangerous and unnecessary journeys, journeys from safe third countries by people who do not need to make that journey to be safe, they can claim in France or wherever it is.

‘This is a policy that if it works, could save lives as well as disrupting the model of traffickers.

‘Even if we are just talking about cancelling a flight tomorrow, there is prejudice to the public interest, to the enactment of decisions that may have that deterrent effect.’

The High Court heard the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, has multiple concerns about the system in Rwanda, including discriminatory access to asylum, a lack of legal representation and other ‘deep-rooted structural problems’.

Today, Mr Dunlop said: ‘The Secretary of State has listened and seriously considered the concerns raised by the UNHCR and has deliberately negotiated arrangements to provide assurances in relation to those concerns.’

Lord Justice Singh, Lady Justice Simler and Lord Justice Stuart-Smith are due to give their decision on the appeal on Monday afternoon.

A second case is also due to be heard in the High Court this afternoon after Asylum Aid, a refugee charity, applied for an urgent interim injunction to stop the Government flying migrants to Rwanda.

Home Office sources said human rights lawyers had tabled a ‘deluge’ of legal claims on behalf of the individuals due to be deported tomorrow.

They said there was a ‘real prospect’ the courts could delay the removal of all 31.

It means that even if the Court of Appeal today grants the Home Secretary the right to go ahead with the first removal flight, there may be no one to put on it.   

Protesters outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London today for the ruling on Rwanda deportation flights

Repeatedly asked about the Prince of Wales’s (left) apparent view that the proposals are ‘appalling’, Boris Johnson (right in Cornwall today) insisted they were essential to ‘break the business model’ of people-smugglers

Today, Mr Johnson told LBC the Government had expected that ‘very active lawyers’ would try to challenge the Rwanda policy.

‘We have always said that we knew that this policy would attract attacks from those who want to have a completely open-doors approach to immigration, who want people to be able to come across the Channel without let or hindrance,’ he said.

‘There are very active lawyers in this field. I have the utmost respect for the legal profession but it is also important we stop criminal gangs.’

Asked if the policy will be worth it if it results in just one person being removed, Mr Johnson said: ‘I think it’s very important that the criminal gangs who are putting people’s lives at risk in the Channel is going to be broken – is being broken – by this Government.

‘They are selling people a false hope, they are luring them into something extremely risky and criminal.’

Home Office sources said human rights lawyers had tabled a ‘deluge’ of legal claims on behalf of 31 individuals due to be deported tomorrow

Lawyers acting on behalf of the 31 migrants slated to be sent to Rwanda are said either to have lodged legal appeals or warned they would do so today.

‘We are getting claims from every single one,’ a source said. ‘In many cases they are making multiple claims under various bits of the Human Rights Act and modern slavery legislation. Over the weekend there have been new claims every hour and we expect more right up to when the flight goes.

‘We will operate the flight even if there is just one person on it, but there is a real prospect that even that might not be possible.’

Under the terms of the deal with Rwanda, those crossing the Channel illegally risk being given a one-way ticket to Kigali where they will have the chance to claim asylum in the African state.

Former security minister Sir John Hayes said it was ‘ethically the right thing to do, as well as being in line with public demands to take back control of our borders’.

‘I am sick to death of deranged do-gooders and fat cat lawyers frustrating government policy and the interests of the nation,’ said Sir John, who chairs the Common Sense Group of Tory MPs. ‘If we end up in a farcical situation where no one is allowed to get on a flight declared lawful by the courts because of spurious human rights challenges then we will have to repeal the Human Rights Act.

‘We are already committed to reforming it and we may need to go further. Every major policy this Government tries to pursue is getting caught up by the long tail of Blairism through legislation like the Human Rights Act.’

Revealed: The piously lefty cabal who fought so hard to ground a jet of Channel migrants bound for Rwanda 

By David Wilkes for the Daily Mail  

A collection of Left-wing groups have made legal challenges in a bid to block ministers’ plan to send migrants to Rwanda. They are represented by lawyers who in many cases have links to the Labour Party and a lengthy record of bringing cases against the Government.

MATRIX CHAMBERS

Barristers from the trendy London human rights chambers – co-founded by Cherie Blair – represented the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, Care4Calais and Detention Action yesterday.

One was top QC Raza Husain, who last month retweeted a message by Labour MP Chris Bryant criticising Boris Johnson‘s response to Partygate that said: ‘Downing Street under him has been a cesspit of arrogant, entitled narcissists.’ Mrs Blair left the chambers in 2014.

LEIGH DAY

A separate challenge to the Rwanda policy by charity Asylum Aid, due to be heard in court on Monday, was lodged by law firm Leigh Day, which was accused of being behind a ‘witch-hunt’ of British troops in Iraq.

The firm and three of its solicitors – including senior partner Martyn Day – were cleared of a string of misconduct allegations following a disciplinary hearing in 2017. They had been charged by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority after the Ministry of Defence submitted a lengthy dossier of alleged wrongdoing, including claims they caused innocent troops years of torment.

Leigh Day worked with Birmingham solicitor Phil Shiner to represent Iraqi clients in parallel legal actions. Mr Shiner was struck off as a solicitor for dishonesty over his handling of war-crime allegations against the Army.

The thwarted lefty cabal that tried to stop the Rwandan flight include the former Labor Prime Minister’s wife, Cherie Blair

DOUGHTY STREET

Asylum Aid’s legal team also includes several barristers from Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s former chambers, Doughty Street.

They include leading human rights lawyer Helena Kennedy QC, who has been an active and outspoken Labour peer since entering the House of Lords as Baroness Kennedy after the general election in 1997. It is also where Amal Clooney, the lawyer wife of film star George, practises.

Robert Latham, who retains an associate tenancy at Doughty Street, supported Sir Keir’s leadership campaign with a donation of £100,000.

DUNCAN LEWIS SOLICITORS

Acting for the PCS union, Care 4 Calais and Detention Action, Duncan Lewis has a long track record of bringing challenges against government immigration measures.

In 2020, The Mail on Sunday revealed the firm had received £55 million in legal aid from the British taxpayer in just three years. The paper also told how the company’s staff have travelled to Calais and offered support to refugees hoping to reach Britain.

Owned by entrepreneur Amarpal Singh Gupta, who has been dubbed ‘Britain’s legal aid king’, the firm has forged a close relationship with charities that work among refugee camps on the French coast. Staff have also reportedly boasted of mixing with senior Labour Party figures, including deputy leader Angela Rayner and foreign spokesman David Lammy.

DETENTION ACTION

Bella Sankey, director of campaign group Detention Action, is a former would-be Labour MP endorsed by Sir Keir. Like the Labour leader many years before, Miss Sankey previously worked at Liberty, the campaign group for civil liberties which has long been a recruiting ground for Labour politicians.

PUBLIC AND COMMERCIAL SERVICES UNION

The union’s firebrand general secretary Mark Serwotka was kicked out of the Labour Party in 1992 for being a member of the Trotskyist group Socialist Organiser. In 2016, he rejoined Labour, saying his long-time friend Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership offered a ‘genuine break from the past’. In recent years, he has called for a General Strike to ‘bring the Tories down’.

CARE4CALAIS

The charity was at the centre of a scandal in 2017 when it emerged its married founder Clare Moseley, a former accountant and then 46, had a year-long affair with Mohamed Bajjar, then 27. He had falsely claimed to be a Syrian refugee, but was in reality a Tunisian market-stall trader married to another British woman.

The charity is currently embroiled in a Charity Commission inquiry over ‘serious governance concerns’.

ASYLUM AID

Its Cambridge-educated director Alison Pickup leads a team providing legal representation to asylum seekers and refugees. She was previously legal director of the Public Law Project – and before that had a practice at Doughty Street Chambers, where she specialised in immigration, asylum and migrants’ rights in the context of unlawful detention, community care, asylum support and access to justice.

Among her achievements, Doughty Street Chambers’ website lists her as having been junior counsel in ‘two of the leading challenges to the legal aid cuts’.

One was the successful challenge to the proposed ‘residence test’ for legal aid, the other established that Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights – the right to respect for private and family life – may require legal aid to be provided in immigration cases.