Profession renews protests over Johnson lawyer remarks
Leaders of the legal profession on both sides of the border have again protested to the UK Government over anti-lawyer comments directed at those acting for asylum seekers threatened with removal to Rwanda.
The temperature of the debate rose after the planned initial flight was grounded yesterday evening, following a successful urgent application to the European Court of Human Rights.
It was brought by an Iraqi man who earlier yesterday was refused permission by the UK Supreme Court to appeal his failure to obtain an interim injunction in the English High Court. The court decided, having regard the relative lack of legal procedures open to asylum seekers in Rwanda and to the "serious triable issues" still to be determined in the UK, to "indicate to the Government of the United Kingdom, under Rule 39, that the applicant should not be removed until the expiry of a period of three weeks following the delivery of the final domestic decision in the ongoing judicial review proceedings".
Earlier yesterday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the "attempt to undermine the Rwanda policy" was "effectively... abetting the work of the criminal gangs" involved in enabling people to cross the Channel in small boats.
Writing to the Prime Minister and Immigration Minister Tom Pursglove in response, Dean of Faculty Roddy Dunlop QC said this had "unsurprisingly been understood as referring to the legal profession", and if that was what was intended, "then I must protest this in the extreme... [It] is wrong in law. It is fatuous. It is vacuous. And, most worryingly, it is dangerous".
Mr Dunlop continued: "Most reasonable people understand that resorting to law does not undermine confidence in the legal system: rather, it shows a healthy legal system in action. For the Prime Minister to argue to the contrary is itself destructive of the rule of law. It is wholly unbecoming of the leader of a free democracy."
He repeated his concern that such continuing verbal attacks might result in actual attacks on members of the profession, and pleased for an end to the "prevailing culture of populist attacks on an entire sector which in most cases is simply doing its job".
In a joint statement, the Bar Council and the Law Society for England & Wales said: "It is misleading and dangerous for the Prime Minister to suggest lawyers who bring such legal challenges are doing anything other than their job and upholding the law.
"Anyone at risk of a life-changing order has a right to challenge its legality with the assistance of a lawyer, who has a duty to advise their client on their rights.
"The Bar Council and Law Society of England & Wales together call on the Prime Minister to stop attacks on legal professionals who are simply doing their jobs."
Messages have meantime been circulating among Conservative MPs that it is time to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights. (Russia is the only other country to have done so.)