It’s a mark of the absurd legalism of Britain’s political system that after a month of fierce protests and years of government intransigence over asylum hotels, the future of the asylum system now rests on the whims of several judges in a dispute about planning permission. The Home Office and the owners of the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex are appealing against the temporary injunction granted to Epping Forest district council last week, which ordered its closure as asylum accommodation after weeks of local protests.
All this really amounts to is a political excuse for the present dysfunctional asylum system
The judgement, which is due today at 2 p.m., will have ramifications for the entire asylum system: other councils, also experiencing protests like in Epping, may follow suit, potentially making it impossible for the government to continue housing asylum seekers in these venues. Currently, there are some 138 asylum seekers being housed in the Bell Hotel and 32,000 in hotels countrywide, out of a total of 111,000.
But while we await the ruling, one can already note the arguments the Home Office has had to put forward in this case, which have been deeply revealing of the government’s political priorities. Regardless of whether the Court of Appeal now rules in its favour, the legal action has occasioned a damningly explicit admission: that in the eyes of the Labour government, concern for ‘human rights’, the ECHR, and the interests of asylum seekers take precedence over the safety and security of the British people.
The fact of the appeal itself is striking given how loath this government typically is to challenge legal rulings. If there is one thing that is beyond sacred to the human rights lawyer in No. 10 and his personally appointed human rights lawyer ally Lord Hermer, it is the so-called ‘rule of law’. The new Attorney General set this out in his Bingham Lecture last year, where he named ‘judges’ and ‘lawyers’ top of the list of the ‘essence of liberal democracy’ and warned against populist talk of the ‘will of the people’.
Under the Hermer/Starmer double act, major foreign policy questions about arms licences to Israel and whether to join US strikes on Iran have been decided in terms of legalism, not the national interest. Slavish legalism also underlies the Chagos debacle. The UK handed over strategically important sovereign territory and paid Mauritius billions for the privilege because of the weight afforded to an ‘advisory’ opinion from a foreign court on which sits a former official of the Chinese Communist party. Domestically, meanwhile, cabinet ministers grumble that Hermer’s recent legal power grabs are hampering policymaking across government – one which is supposedly for ‘builders, not blockers’.
But now it seems the government is quite willing to fight a legal ruling – as long as it’s in order to prop up its reviled asylum system. Its submissions include straightforwardly political arguments about the headache it would mean for the government were the Bell Hotel to close. One Home Office official has even suggested that the dispute was a matter of ‘democracy’ – rhetoric Hermer himself would surely denounce were it to come from the right.
The government’s arguments betray an utter indifference to the safety of Epping’s residents. Edward Brown KC, speaking on behalf of Yvette Cooper, said:
The fact of criminal wrongdoing (and local concerns arising from criminal wrongdoing) is not a sufficient reason to require the immediate closure of asylum accommodation.
Indeed, though there are already allegations of serious crimes by three asylum seekers in Epping, Edwards insists that believing asylum seekers are more likely to commit crimes is ‘not a conclusion that can or should have been reached at all’ by Epping Forest district council. These are frankly disgraceful arguments when even one such avoidable crime is too many. Precisely how many sexual assaults will need to happen in Epping before there is ‘sufficient’ reason to close the hotel?
For a government eager to avoid the charge of being two-tier, another argument it makes is shocking. The Home Office concedes that Epping council has an interest in being able to determine whether or not there is an asylum hotel in its town – but insists that the ‘relevant public interests in play are not equal’ and indeed are ‘fundamentally different in nature’. The Home Secretary, for her part, ‘is taken for these purposes as representing the public interest of the entirety of the United Kingdom and discharging obligations conferred on her alone by parliament’. So the interests of the migrants, the government and its asylum system are deemed by Yvette Cooper to be in a higher tier of priorities – only of secondary importance is the right of Epping schoolgirls to feel safe as they walk around their town.
At times, the submissions drip with lawyerly condescension. ‘In the real world’, sniffs Edwards, ‘it is not realistic to think that the objective of the protests is compliance with the planning regime’. Instead, they were ‘driven by a range of grievances’, including ‘animosity towards asylum seekers’.
This line of argument only raises another double standard. The Home Office is happy to launch a legal action in service of a political end, but suggests it is somehow illegitimate for a council representing the interests of its citizens to do the same. In any case, so what if the protests are driven by ‘animosity’? One might retort that the government’s incomprehensible policy is driven by foolhardy sentimentality.
The key submission simply makes explicit a political reality which has long been clear to everyone: that Labour places the dictates of foreign courts ahead of the interests of British citizens. Unlike Epping’s interest in planning control, ‘the [Home Secretary’s] statutory duty is a manifestation of the United Kingdom’s obligations under Article 3 ECHR, which establishes non-derogable fundamental human rights’, it argues. ‘Non-derogable fundamental human rights’ – this high-sounding legalese is presumably expected to function as some sort of spell, ending the argument there by invoking the highest possible authority. All it really amounts to is a political excuse for the present dysfunctional asylum system: ‘We think the ECHR is very important and it is presently a line we don’t want to cross.’
The country knew that already, of course, but it is nevertheless quite something to hear the government say it so directly. The Home Office website proudly proclaims: ‘The first duty of the government is to keep citizens safe and the country secure.’ Yet faced with persistent local fury and concern, the Home Office is now lecturing the people of Epping that they have to accept a migrant hotel in their town because of the government’s ‘duty’ under the ECHR.
It is precisely this deranged, topsy-turvy state of affairs that the protesters are campaigning to be corrected. It’s now clear that the government actively wants it to continue.
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