Thread by @AlasdairMack66

So Priti Patel is on the warpath again – about asylum seekers, their lawyers and the legal mechanisms they use to challenge the Home Office. Here’s a little thread to try & illustrate how honest she is being in presenting the government as the victims in all this. 1/

https://twitter.com/mckinneytweets/status/1373923962762240002

My asylum-seeking client – let’s call her Z – is a single woman with a small child. They applied to the Home Office for support & accommodation (“asylum support”) in March 2020. The HO agreed they’re destitute and therefore eligible for asylum support. 2/

Z and her child waited for that accommodation to be provided 3/

And they waited 4/

Now obvs in March 2020 & for some time after that, the Home Office faced a massive problem in locating suitable accommodation for people, for reasons I’m sure I don’t need to go into.

But in Z’s case almost a year went by with no action by the HO & no coherent explanation 5/

In the meantime a local authority found a shared house for Z & her child as they had nowhere else to go, but the law is clear that it isn’t the LA’s responsibility to house asylum-seekers & the LA was also unable to find a place with suitable privacy for them to live long-term 6/

Eventually Z found solicitors who sent a pre-action letter [a letter intended to give the Home Office a chance to avoid court action] saying they’d begin judicial review proceedings unless the HO provided the accommodation it had agreed Z needed nearly a year previously 7/

In reply the HO flannelled and blamed COVID. So off we went with a claim for judicial review. The High Court was concerned enough to give the Home Office a tight deadline to explain why it shouldn’t be ordered to provide accommodation to Z immediately. 8/

Literally the day after our judicial review claim was lodged, the HO told one of its private-sector accommodation providers to find Z a home & told us this would be done within a fortnight. Coincidental timing? Do you think? 9/

We're waiting to see if the HO's promise materialises in this case.

But what does this sorry tale tell us more broadly? 10/

Well, 1st, when the govt tries to undermine judicial review or claims it’s being abused, consider who was abusing it here. Why did we have to go to court to get the HO to act? Why didn’t it do something even a few days earlier? And this kind of brinkmanship is not untypical. 11/

2nd, if Z didn’t have active lawyers – who btw are risking not being paid at all if the claim fails – the HO would still be sitting on its hands, going on self-pityingly about how hard the pandemic has been for it & not doing what it accepts it’s legally obliged to do for Z. 12/

3rd, the HO has been shambolic beyond belief in this regard during the pandemic, veering btw paralysis & panic & exacerbated by a decision years ago to outsource it all to inadequately supervised private contractors. Here’s @maybulman’s sobering piece 12/

https://twitter.com/maybulman/status/1373914020856668163

So is the asylum system ‘broken’ as Priti Patel keeps saying? Well <gestures at pretty much everything> yes, but not in the way she means. It’s broken because of years of failed policies led by malign & incompetent ministers keen to dole out blame to everyone but themselves. 14/

And there’s little hope of reform while people like Z and her child remain political footballs, as they have been for at least the last 25 years, under governments of all three main parties. Welcome to Britain. We need to do better. Thank you for getting this far. end/