IMMIGRATION

Asylum application - applicants detained for up to ten days under Home Office policy to assist speedy determination of applications - detention lawful R (Saadi and others) v Secretary of State for the Home Department: CA (Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers MR, Lords Justice Schiemann and Waller): 19 October 2001The claimants, Turkish Kurds, claimed asylum on their arrival in the UK.

Under Home Office policy announced on 16 March 2000 asylum applicants liable to detention under the Immigration Act 1971 were to be detained at a specific detention centre for a period of about seven days where it appeared that their claims could be determined within that period.The claimants were detained for up to ten days under the policy.

The secretary of state had no reason to believe that the claimants would abscond or otherwise evade immigration control if granted temporary admission, and but for the new policy the claimants would have been entitled to temporary admission pending the determination of their claims under Home Office policy announced in 1998.

Mr Justice Collins granted the claimants judicial review on the grounds that their detention, though lawful under domestic immigration law, infringed article 5 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, as scheduled to the Human Rights Act 1998.

The secretary of state appealed.Lord Goldsmith QC, Attorney-General, David Pannick QC and Michael Fordham (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for the secretary of state.

Rick Scannell and Duran Seddon (instructed by Wilson & Co) for the claimants.Held, allowing the appeal, that the policy of the secretary of state to detain certain asylum seekers at the detention centre for up to ten days to enable the speedy determination of their asylum claims was lawful under domestic law and did not infringe the right to liberty afforded by article 5 of the convention.