LETTER OF THE LAW
Last-minute legal challenges to block foreign criminals being deported will be BANNED
LAST ditch legal attempts to block foreign criminals being booted out of Britain will be banned next year.
Priti Patel said she would be toughening up laws to stop ‘stay of execution’ hearings often an hour before planes carrying criminals jet away from the UK.
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The Home Secretary stressed that lawyers often had months to work on cases - but lodged their final appeals deliberately at the last moment.
They can "literally take place an hour or so before these flights leave in the middle of the night.”
The legal method stopped 35 criminals being deported to Jamaica earlier this month.
A group including killers and rapists filed last-minute legal challenges to block the foreign offenders boarding a deportation flight.
It landed in Jamaica yesterday with 13 criminals on board, including three killers, a paedophile and four drug dealers.
The 23 who were dragged off had been jailed for a total of 156 years, including one life term. They include multiple rapists, a murderer, two convicted of attempted murder, as well as class A drug dealers.
Among the campaign groups that helped keep them here was Detention Action. One of their lawyers, Bella Sankey, stood to be a Labour MP last year and was endorsed by leader Sir Keir Starmer.
Celebrities including Naomi Campbell, Line of Duty star Thandie Newton and Bond actress Naomie Harris were among a group of 82 public figures who signed an open letter demanding the flight did not take off.
The letter said many of the people on the flight had lived in the UK since they were kids and could be descendants of the Windrush generation or that they may have been forced to commit crimes while being trafficked.
Speaking to LBC, Ms Patel said criminals use law firms to use “last minute legal appeals to basically stop themselves from being deported.”
She added: “I have said previously, there are many cases that do not warrant those appeals, where these are last minute, late night claims that come through to duty judges or overnight judges, where their legal representatives that specialise in these types of claims are preventing these people from being deported with, quite frankly, vexatious and false claims to keep them in the country when they should be removed.”
She added: “They’ve had plenty of time in the past to put any legal representation forward, they do it at the last minute just before they’re due to leave the country.
“These are the type of changes that we want to bring in next year and this will require legislative changes across the Home Office and across the Ministry of Justice.”
Lawyers suggested the Home Secretary join them to see the work they do - rather than single them out.
Chair of the Bar Council, Amanda Pinto QC said: “I am concerned to hear the Home Secretary continuing to criticise immigration lawyers unfairly for simply doing their job.
"We invite her to shadow an immigration barrister for one day, to understand properly what their work involves and how rigorously they apply their professional duties.
"Access to justice is at the core of what the Bar does and, if it is unclear how that works in practice, we are happy to give the Minister that first-hand experience.”
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