Weekly Update 1 April 2022
Weekly Update 1 April 2022
Dear Friends,
Defending the Rule of Law sometimes means standing up, again and again, for principled solutions in politically sensitive areas. Refugee and asylum law is one such area.
Today, the Bingham Centre publishes its fourth report on the Nationality and Borders Bill. We argue that the House of Lords should resist pressure from the House of Commons which has reinserted a number of problematic clauses into the Bill. Among these are clauses that would create a two-tier system of refugees, undermining the protections which the UK is bound to provide under the UN Refugee Convention. We support amendments which have been tabled to reverse these changes and prevent breaches of the Convention.
Separately, we are encouraged by amendments which the House of Lords passed yesterday to the Judicial Review and Courts Bill. The Bingham Centre's report on the Bill recommended that peers should support amendments removing a presumption that would weaken remedies in judicial review, and an ouster clause that would have created obstacles to the review of Upper Tribunal decisions.
In this Update, we also bring you news of the latest initiatives of our Public and Youth Engagement programme, a seminar presentation on the abuse of counter-terrorism laws, and a parliamentary committee report on Coronavirus legislation that addresses themes of legal certainty and effective parliamentary scrutiny which have been a focus of our work since the early months of the pandemic.
Readers are invited to register for a RECONNECT conference on Lessons for a 'Post-Pandemic' Future which we will be co-hosting on 28 April, and for our short course on The European Rule of Law Toolbox, which runs on 11, 12, 18 and 19 May. Both events will be held online and further details are available at the end of this email.
You can read the whole Update here.
