Britain’s Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood looks set to recruit hundreds of members of the public to serve as adjudicators in a reform to the asylum appeals process in the Immigration and Asylum Bill. The bill is scheduled to be read in parliament on Tuesday, June 30th.
In the style of a magistrate in English and Welsh common law, a (trained) volunteer in the new Independent Immigration Appeals Authority (IIAA) would hear just a single appeal from an asylum seeker.
This would replace the current two tiered-immigration tribunal system, where possibly illegal migrants can have two, if not more, appeals rejected.
The proposals were already in circulation in a January letter to the Chair of the Commons Justice Committee, Mahmood set out further details of her plans to reform the asylum and immigration appeals system.
Mahmood pushing the new approach to decision-making up the agenda coincided with her announcing a new refugee sponsorship route into the UK and calling for the sacking of immigration minister Mike Tapp—who went off-message in a newspaper article.
The IIAA would also be used to target ‘public interest’ cases, such as including “high-harm” foreign offenders and asylum seekers who make human rights claims which are “clearly without merit.”
If established, it is not yet clear what type of decisions these new public adjudicators would take to the asylum appeals decisions in front of them. What is clear is that under the old system, multiple abuses and absurdities such as the ‘chicken nuggets defence’ have flourished.
UPDATE: Promised reforms to the asylum appeal system should be understood in the context of Labour plans to bring in thousands more migrants through a new ‘legal’ route.
