Kent Law School academics Professor Nick Grief, Sian Lewis-Anthony and Dr Thanos Zartaloudis have called for an apology from the Home Office after a tweet, posted earlier today, blamed ‘activist lawyers’ for delays and disruption in returning migrants.
The tweet from the Home Office said: “Small boat crossings are totally unnecessary and we continue to return migrants with no right to be in the UK. Another flight left today with more planned in the coming weeks.” An accompanying graphic stated: “We are working to remove migrants with no right to remain in the UK. But current return regulations are rigid and open to abuse, allowing activist lawyers to delay and disrupt returns. Soon we will no longer be bound by EU laws and can negotiate our own return arrangements.”
Professor Grief, Sian Lewis-Anthony and Dr Zartaloudis wrote a response to the tweet in the form of a joint letter:
‘The Home Office has sunk to new levels of corrosive disingenuousness, by depicting lawyers as subverting the state’s efforts to deport allegedly irregular migrants. It is engaged in an ugly war of words that pits an always law-abiding state against an enemy invasion, not of armed warriors, but of defenceless, desperate human beings, whose sole aim is to find somewhere safe to live and bring up their families.
‘To claim that lawyers who seek to represent some of the most vulnerable people in these islands are subversive offends against the very core of our legal system and democracy. If one follows the logic of the Home Office’s statement to its paradoxical conclusion, it suggests that laws enacted by Parliament are subversive. It suggests that the rule of law, according to which no one, including government ministers, is above the law, is subversive. It is utterly shameful to depict the legal profession in this way. The Home Office should apologise for its egregious hostility to the legal profession and by extension to those whose rights lawyers are trying valiantly to defend. Without an independent legal profession, there can be no rule of law, and powerful actors including state actors and criminal gangs can never be held to account. The Home Office should set an example and stand by our legal system, our system of parliamentary democracy and the rule of law – not seek to denigrate them in the eyes of the world.’
Signed
Professor Nick Grief
Dr Thanos Zartaloudis, Reader
Sian Lewis-Anthony, Senior Lecturer
Kent Law School