The attorney general has defended the government’s decision to replace judges with non-judges to hear immigration appeals - telling MPs that the planned new body will comply will the rule of law.
Lord Hermer (Richard Hermer KC) appeared before the House of Commons justice select committee yesterday - the day after the prime minister's resignation announcement. Committee members voiced concern about reforms announced last summer under which a new body of professional adjudicators will hear asylum appeals more quickly than the current tribunal.
Committee member Tessa Munt (Lib Dem) said she did not understand how replacing an independent tribunal with a body based within the Home Office complied with the rule of law - which Hermer had previously stated as the defining element of his tenure.
Hermer said: ‘It is perfectly possible to devise new appeal systems that are fully rule of law compliant and that is absolutely our intention here. We’re bringing it in, in part, because of a rule of law requirement that the appeal stage doesn’t take years to get through. So we want something that is more efficient in the immigration space.’
Hermer said the legislation would be carefully scrutinised to ensure it complies with the Human Rights Act. However, Munt thought it ‘extraordinary’ that the government did not opt to improve the existing mechanism rather than put something inside the Home Office, ‘which wouldn’t look very independent’.
Hermer replied: ‘People will need to wait to see what it is. In terms of the challenges facing the home secretary, I think she is right not to feel constrained by existing structures and she’s right not to feel that the only answer must be tweak that which we already have.’
Tribunals are not staffed exclusively by lawyers and the magistrate system is not exclusively presided over by lawyers, the attorney general added. ‘The key element might not be the certificate you hold in your hand per se. The key element might be what is there by way of structure. Is there training? What are the decisions that need to be made? Are they ones that you truly need detailed legal background in order to fairly adjudicate upon?’
Labour’s Sarah Russell pointed out that magistrates do not sit, for instance, within the police. ‘What we are talking about is a body making decisions about people’s legal rights and entitlements, which have absolutely life-changing consequences for them, and the decision-maker who reviews that decision, sits within that body and may or may not be legally qualified from what we’ve seen. How is that compliant with the right to a fair trial?’
Hermer replied: ‘We need to wait to see precisely what is proposed. That will have obviously been tested from a rule of law perspective.'
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