ILPA’s Legal Director has continued to raise concerns with the Home Office in relation to the lack of access to justice and the process that is being used for people who have arrived in the UK via the Channel. One of the Home Office’s responses to ILPA was referred to at paragraph 17 in the recent decision to grant interim relief in the case of DA & Ors v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWHC 3080 (Admin). We continue to push the Home Office for answers about access to legal advice throughout the process, their engagement with us on this issue has been unsatisfactory. ILPA’s Legal Director has also met with the UNHCR and the ICIBI to raise these concerns.
We have been regularly meeting with others in the sector to discuss the use of army barracks as accommodation, and ILPA has put some of the lawyers who are working on these cases in touch with each other so that they can share evidence and experiences. In several cases practitioners have had success in getting people moved out of the barracks at the pre action stage.