It is important to note from the offset of this short article that this is not intended to be a comment on the politics of refugees entering the UK, nor is it intended to try to pursuade the reader of any particular point of view on that issue. However, this short article is about highlighting the dangerous rhetoric being used by the Home Office, and now the Home Secretary, which undermines the rule of law.
The news has recently been fraught with stories of refugees making their way across the English Channel and their deportation has sparked debate between the Home Office, the Home Secretary and who they call 'activist lawyers'.
On Wednesday 26th August, the Home Office Twitter account posted a short video which stated that 'activist lawyers' were responsible for the delay in removing migrants who do not have the right to stay in the UK. This video has since been removed following complaint.
On 3rd September the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, tweeted the following:
''Today we removed people who came here via small boat.
They had previously claimed asylum elsewhere and had no legal right to be in the UK.
Removals continue to be frustrated by activist lawyers, but I will not let up until this route is unviable.''
Lawyers, when acting against the government in asylum and refugee cases, are simply doing their job. Namley, seeking to uphold the laws which have been implemented by our democratically elected Parliament. It seems that the rhetoric adopted by Priti Patel makes a lawyer representing their client a policitcal issue when it should not be.
What is worse is that this is not simply an attack on lawyers for successfully representing their clients in cases against the government, but rather, this is an attack on the rule of law.
It is an uncontroversial position that the law applies equally to the government as it does to everyone else. In late 2019 we saw how the Supreme Court determined that the government tried to unlawfully shut down Parliament for 6 weeks (Miller No 2 [2019] UKSC 41). Are the lawyers who acted in that case to be considered activists for doing their job which incidentally helped to upholding the democratic process? Equally, are the lawyers who represent refugees/asylum seekers considered activists for successfully representing the rights of their clients?
It is suggested that the answer to both of these questions has to be a resounding no.
Even if we do consider lawyers to be activist, they can only be as activist as the law allows them to be. What Priti Patel really means, therefore, is that it is the laws themselves, as well as the courts in making decisions based on those laws, that are preventing the removal of those refugees. This is the Rule of Law in practice. Yet the rhetoric adopted by the Home Office and Priti Patel seems to suggest that they do not want to play by the rules.