Human Rights Committee reports on Crime and Courts Bill

The Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) has published a Report on the Crime and Courts Bill which will be considered at Report stage in the House of Lords. The Committee has raised concerns with some areas of the Bill relating to immigration, including:

Immigration and nationality judicial reviews

The Bill provides for the transfer of immigration and nationality judicial reviews from the High Court to the Upper Tribunal owing to the delays caused for all categories of case by the volume of immigration and asylum judicial reviews heard in the Administrative Court.

The Committee has urged the Government to consider amending the Bill to insert additional safeguards to ensure that immigration and nationality cases in which human rights such as life, liberty or freedom from torture are at stake continue to be decided by high court judges after the transfer.

Family visit visas: full right of appeal

The Committee opposes the proposal in the Bill to remove the full right of appeal against the refusal of a family visit visa, given the number of successful appeals and the continued lack of evidence before Parliament as to the proportion of appeals which succeed because new evidence is submitted as the result of an error by the applicant rather than the UK Border Agency.

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