Лидеры

12 July 2023 – Just useful and interesting UK & EEA Immigration Law news and updates from the Legal Centre – Open 7 days a week - www.legalcentre.org - +44(0)3300010342, +44(0)7791145923 (WhatsApp/Viber) >>> No right to face-to-face legal advice in detention: https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewca/civ/2023/764 Immigration detainees don’t have a right to face-to-face legal advice, the Court of Appeal has held in R (on the application of SPM) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWCA Civ 764. SPM was held at Derwentside Immigration Removal Centre in early 2022. At the time, there were no nearby firms contracted to provide initial legally aided advice there under the Detention Duty Advice Scheme. SPM could only receive such advice by telephone or videoconferencing. She argued that her detention was unlawful because of a real risk that her common law right of access to justice would be breached if she couldn’t have an in-person legal visit. SPM lost her case. Her fundamental problem was section 27 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. This says that legal aid services can be provided ‘by telephone or other electronic means’, and there’s no duty to make an individual’s chosen method available. Even without that, the Court said, access to justice didn’t require face-to-face legal advice, particularly where it was initially limited to a 30-minute triage: "I am not persuaded that the lack of an option, in practice, for face-to-face meetings as part of DDAS constituted an impediment to justice or created a real risk of such an impediment. At the most, it was a less than ideal way of carrying out initial legal visits for some of the women at Derwentside for some of the time". Arrangements have changed at Derwentside; initial advice is now available face-to-face there. If and when the Illegal Migration Bill passes, however it will require a significant increase in detention capacity and, as a result, in legal visits. It remains to be seen whether the Home Office relies on SPM to justify remote-only advice on a much bigger scale.

04 July 2023 – Just useful and interesting UK & EEA Immigration Law news and updates from the Legal Centre – Open 7 days a week - www.legalcentre.org - +44(0)3300010342, +44(0)7791145923 (WhatsApp/Viber) >>> The 180-day absence rule doesn’t apply to people with a spouse or partner visa Many UK immigration categories impose a requirement that the visa holder must not be outside the UK for more than 180 days in any 12-month period — that is, if the person wants to apply for indefinite leave to remain. The good news is that this rule doesn’t apply to spouse and partner visa holders under the Appendix FM Is there an absences limit for spouses? In short, no. Within the Immigration Rules for spouses and partners — found in the notorious Appendix FM — you won’t find a rule that says a person holding a spouse or partner visa should not be absent from the UK for a certain number of days. But this doesn’t mean that those using this route can get a visa, rarely set foot in the UK but expect to be able to settle here. So be careful with the absences, in any case. >>> Supreme Court finds exclusion of Palestinians from resettlement scheme not unlawful: https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/uksc/2023/23 The Supreme Court has held that there was no legal obligation to consider the equality impact of excluding Palestinians from the UK’s resettlement scheme for refugees from Syria. The design of the scheme was therefore lawful. The case is R (on the application of Marouf) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] UKSC 23. Briefly, the UK’s resettlement scheme relied on one United Nations agency, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), to select refugees for resettlement. This had the effect of excluding from the scheme the many Palestinian refugees living in Syria. This is because UNHCR is excluded from responsibility for Palestinians because they are the responsibility of a different United Nations agency, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).