Last week we had to threaten the Home Office with a judicial review claim – a process which typically costs £1000s – to get a refugee the £8 weekly allowance he’s bn owed since Oct 2020. They agreed at the last minute so we didn’t proceed. So why’s that of any wider interest? 1/

Well, the govt last week issued a “summary” of departments’ submissions to the Independent Review of Administrative Law which raises some, let’s say, controversial attitudes to the legal system within government 2/ https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/no-evidence-behind-whitehalls-attack-on-jr-lawyers/5108101.article

It’s odd they’ve issued only this summary rather than telling us exactly how specific govt depts would like to control processes by which they’re held to account by members of the public via the legal system. We can only speculate on what’s being hidden 3/
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/976219/summary-of-government-submissions-to-the-IRAL.pdf

We do know the Home Office is concerned by the costs of legal processes (we don’t know if these figures include the costs they had to pay to successful applicants) but that concern doesn’t seem to have led it to think about how it might do things better 4/

Vital though it was for the person concerned, it’s of course absurd that we had to threaten to take the HO to court over £8 per week, but as so often with the HO there was no alternative – communications go unanswered & there’s no complaints process worth mentioning 5/

So if the HO feels the JR process is overused (as it clearly does), you’d think it might reflect on why over 80% of judicial review claims are brought against it and whether that says something about its culture & the lack of other ways of challenging its decisions 6/

For instance the HO doesn’t seem to have considered whether creating a less opaque, unresponsive & deliberately obstructive immigration process with full rights of appeal & a functioning complaints process might drastically reduce numbers of legal challenges & therefore costs 7/

Or perhaps it has considered that. Perhaps the Home Office values the benefits of a system where everyone involved drowns in red tape & impenetrable laws & rules, in which case you might think it ought to shut up about the legal costs involved in maintaining that system 8/

The “£8 weekly allowance” case I mentioned was a rare one where a threat of legal action caused the HO to act – in many cases it doesn’t respond to threats, or does so by folding its arms & defiantly defending its decisions, only to back down after the claim has been lodged 9/

Given how often it effectively treats the pre-action process as a “who blinks first” staring-match, again you’d think it was a bit hypocritical of the Home Office to criticise others for misusing it (in fact I don’t even understand what this part of its response means) 10/

Finally, given that many legal aid solicitors’ firms only survive financially by getting paid for defeating the Home Office in court, it’s pretty galling to see the Home Office complaining about having to pay up when it’s acted unlawfully, or boasting about not doing so 11/

The bare minimum we ought to be demanding of politicians is: simplify the immigration system, put people’s rights & needs at the centre, support people with quality legal advice, make the Home Office properly accountable.

It’s not asking for the moon, is it /

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