High Court rules Detained Fast Track system as operated carries an unacceptably high risk of unfairness after legal challenge by Detention Action
The charity Detention Action reports in a press release today that a landmark High Court ruling has found that the way the government operates the Detained Fast Track (DFT) asylum system is unlawful.
EIN members can read the judgment, Detention Action v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2014] EWHC 2245 (Admin), here.
A summary briefing by Detention Action is available here.
According to Detention Action, in today's ruling, Mr Justice Ouseley found that "the DFT as operated carries an unacceptably high risk of unfairness" and there is a range of serious failings within the system. In this context, the unjustifiable delay in allocating lawyers means that the DFT as operated is unlawful.
Detention Action adds that Mr Justice Ouseley criticised the inadequate screening of asylum-seekers' suitability for the DFT and found that failings at various stages of the process meant that survivors of torture, victims of trafficking and other vulnerable people unsuitable for the DFT were not being adequately identified.
Detention Action's Director Jerome Phelps was quoted as saying: "We are delighted that the High Court has recognised that asylum-seekers are being detained in an unlawful process. It is unfortunate that the government has spent years ignoring such warnings from UN and independent monitoring bodies. This is good news for people in detention facing return to torture, but it is also good news for British justice."
Politics.co.uk noted that Mr Justice Ouseley focused on the extremely limited contact detainees had with legal advisers in his judgment.
"I am satisfied that the period in detention before [lawyers] are allocated and the proximity of allocation to the substantive interview means that in too high a proportion of cases, and in particular for those which might be sensitive, the conscientious lawyer does not have time to do properly what may need doing," the judgment stated.
Refugee Council chief executive Maurice Wren was quoted by Politics.co.uk as saying that while today's judgment is extremely significant, it fails to acknowledge the reality that the detained fast track system is "fundamentally unjust" and can never achieve fairness.
"The whole purpose of the detained fast track is to condemn innocent people to a Kafkaesque procedure, solely on the say-so of Home Office officials, because it's politically and administratively convenient to do so. Locking up asylum seekers who've committed no crime and subjecting them to a profoundly and wilfully unjust decision making process is both shameful and demeaning," Wren added.