Solicitors rapped over failed bids for UK asylum

Human rights lawyers will in future face disciplinary action if they fail to reveal “all material facts” when applying for High Court injunctions to halt the removal of failed asylum seekers from the UK.

One of the country’s most senior judges has given a warning they must reveal everything, including facts that might lead to applications failing, it was revealed yesterday.

The judge has also named solicitors responsible in three cases for “very grave failures” to comply with their duty to make full disclosure to the courts.

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Sir John Thomas, President of the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court of Justice, said he believed that if the lawyers in all three cases had set down “the true points against the grant of an injunction” it would have been so obvious the applications could not succeed that they would never have been made.

The problem highlighted by Sir John stems from legal representatives making “ex parte” applications, with only one side represented, to High Court judges in bids to keep failed asylum claimants in the country pending fresh legal challenges.

Judicial alarm is growing because this kind of application is being made in increasing numbers.

Sir John said in a ruling released yesterday it was “deeply regrettable” that in each of the three cases before him there had been very grave failures to comply with the long-standing principle that there must be full disclosure.

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The failures included judges not being told that other courts and tribunals had dismissed previous similar applications. Case histories had also not been presented accurately to judges.

Sir John had before him the cases of “N”, an asylum seeker represented by V Nwosu, from the firm Dylan Conrad Kreolle; Murugesapillai, represented by S Sathananthan, of S Satha & Co; and Hamid, represented by M Hassan of MQ Hassan Solicitors.

The judge said all the solicitors involved had apologised for their failures. Those apologies had been accepted and no further action would be taken against them.

But the judge warned: “That will be the last time this court will, unless there are strong mitigating circumstances, fail to refer people to the Solicitors Regulation Authority for a breach of these very high duties to the court.”

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The judge added that all the solicitors had accepted “that there rests upon an advocate or other officer of the court the highest obligations of disclosure when making an application to the court for ex parte (or without notice) relief.

“It must be appreciated, in particular in this kind of case where on many days this court is faced with a very large number of applications, that it is absolutely essential that there is put on the face of the submission all the points that tell against the grant of relief.”

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