www.newlawjournal.co.uk | 11 September 2020 COMMENT LEGAL WORLD 7

legislative ragbag that became the hostile environment in his new book Welcome to Britain: Fixing our broken immigration system Choppy waters (Biteback, 2018) (https://bit.ly/2ZySrpR). He admits to some confusion as to how the home secretary expected he and his fellow Jon Robins highlights the human rights lawyers could ‘play their part’. clashes between government ‘Perhaps we should have been out patrolling the coastline, shooting the bottom out of & ‘activist lawyers’ over the dinghies for those we assessed as wrongly treatment of migrants claiming asylum?’ he added. Yeo is particularly persuasive on how this irresistible, yet elusive, notion of a net migration target has proved for politicians, despite the failure of successive home secretaries to deliver on it. This, as the lawyer explains, is largely on account of it being inherently difficult to manage other than through ‘a politically suicidal economic policy’.

© Luke Dray/Getty Images The ‘hostile environment’ found political expression through a shopping list of short video posted from the Home of our armed forces’ at the Conservative measures limiting access to work, housing, Office Twitter account at the end of Party’s 2016 conference. healthcare, bank accounts and more last month blamed EU regulations It was May who declared in an interview introduced through the Immigration Act Afor ‘allowing activist lawyers to with The Daily Telegraph in May 2012 2014 and the Immigration Act 2016. As far delay and disrupt returns’ of migrants. The that she wanted to create a ‘really hostile as net migration goes, the government’s government had been thwarted in its plans environment’ for irregular migrants in principal form of deterrence is to ‘make life to put 23 migrants who had arrived in the the UK (https://bit.ly/35isWwG). Earlier as miserable as possible’ for refugees in the UK on small boats on a charter flight to this month a report by the thinktank IPPR hope that this puts others off. Spain. The video, described by The Times as (https://bit.ly/3jPcPuq) recorded that the resembling the opening sequence of the BBC policy had proved a multi-faceted debacle Comment sitcom Dad’s Army with arrows indicating having nurtured racism and forced people While legal aid policy is not part of the ‘British forces attacking Nazi-occupied into destitution and achieved those two hostile environment, it adds to the misery. Europe’, was swiftly taken down. outcomes without encouraging those The Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment The idea of activism being demeaned without leave to remain out of the UK, of Offenders Act 2013 removed publicly- by government as a professional flaw which was the point of the policy. funded legal advice for immigration with predictably incensed the legal Twitterati: It was five years ago that the dead body the exception of asylum. However, the ‘ “Activist lawyers” again? Really? Doing of a three-year-old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, legal aid market is so dysfunctional that your job is now activism, it seems,’ tweeted washed up on a Turkish shore. A photo the likelihood of a migrant actually finding the Bar Council. ‘We are wondering what an showing his body lying face down in the a decent lawyer prepared to take on their “activist Home Secretary” does.’ sand drew the world’s attention to the harsh case is vanishingly slight. According to Matthew Rycroft, permanent secretary reality of the migrant crisis and offered a research last year by Dr Jo Wilding, the at the Home Office, admitted that officials time for calm reflection. average cost of an asylum case is double the should not have used the phrase; however A few weeks later Theresa May addressed fixed fee available and, consequently, there the home secretary waded in asserting the Tory faithful at the 2015 conference. is ‘virtually no chance’ of an adult asylum people who had arrived in the UK in small ‘What I am proposing is a deal,’ she applicant being taken on by a high-quality boats had no ‘legal right’ to be in the began. ‘The fewer people there are who lawyer (‘Justice in a time of austerity (Pt 5)’, country. ‘Removals continue to be frustrated wrongly claim asylum in Britain, the more 169 NLJ 7847, p7). According to the legal by activist lawyers, but I will not let up until generous we can be in helping the most charity Bail for Immigration Detainees, this route is unviable,’ Priti Patel tweeted. vulnerable people in the world’s most more than four of 10 detainees do not even An obliging ‘government source’ dangerous places.’ It was a reference to the have a lawyer. Hardly surprising then that continued the attack on ‘loudmouthed government’s net migration policy and her there are the ‘last minute challenges’ so lawyers and barristers’ who seem to plan was for what the immigration barrister deprecated by politicians. ‘spend more time on social media than Colin Yeo has called ‘a compassion quota’. Colin Yeo argues that the Conservative representing their clients’ who think ‘even ‘My message to the immigration government’s increasing focus on the mildest criticism of their profession will campaigners and human rights lawyers is immigration was to appease the right wing bring about the destruction of democracy’. this,’ the then home secretary continued. of his party and countering the rise of UKIP. ‘You can play your part in making this ‘It you want to stop feeding the crocodiles All too familiar happen or you can try to frustrate it. But then you had better not run out of buns,’ The ‘activist lawyer’ is a familiar and if you choose to frustrate it, you will have Ken Clarke once said of this approach. NLJ pernicious refrain. It was deployed by the to live with the knowledge that you are then home secretary Theresa May to attack depriving people in genuine need of the Dr Jon Robins is an NLJ columnist, editor of lawyers who ‘harangue and harass’ the sanctuary our country can offer.’ The Justice Gap & visiting lecturer at Middlesex ‘bravest of the brave: the men and women Colin Yeo forensically takes apart the University and Winchester University.