It’s not asylum seekers who are ‘unlawful’ now, but Priti Patel’s policy. That’s how justice should be served

Holding asylum seekers in disused and semi-derelict army barracks was always immoral; now it has been declared unlawful. The ruling by the High Court, on a case made by six asylum seekers against the home secretary, no less, is important in itself, but it also stands as a reminder of the vital role an independent and free judiciary plays in protecting individual freedoms.

It takes no great powers of extra sensory perception to imagine what the reaction might have been in Priti Patel’s office when she learned of the outcome. She has been humiliated by a handful of the kind of penniless refugees she has spent so much of her time seemingly demonising and victimising. It is not they who are “unlawful” today, but the policy of the Right Honourable Priti Patel MP. That is how justice should be dispensed, with no regard to political pressure or public opinion. She might swear and rant about lefty lawyers and the like as much as she wants, but Ms Patel faces a claim for damages. Many will think it couldn’t happen to a nicer home secretary.

Of course Napier Barracks was unsafe, and even Ms Patel and the Home Office sought improvements in standards at the establishment, which formerly provided accommodation to squaddies that would have been judged spartan even by the Victorian standards prevailing when they were built. The litany of shortcomings detailed during the hearings is long and depressing to read about, let alone try to live in: overcrowded, underventilated dormitories affording no privacy, fire risks, filth and generally decrepit state fall some way short of the Home Office’s claims that the place was safe and secure. Sadly, such conditions are commonplace for fellow human beings escaping torture, and have shamed the nation for too long.

Such squalor was inexcusable at any point, but all the more unforgivable at a time of a pandemic. An outbreak of Covid was inevitable, with all that implied for those infected and for the wider community. The Home Office thus even contrived to fail in its duty of care to the wider community.

Even after all it has been through, though, the Home Office seems determined to carry on using the barracks, even though the High Court judged that it was unlikely they’d be suitable under the law. It seems like the kind of cocktail of stubbornness, incompetence and inhumanity that has been the hallmark of the department under Ms Patel and indeed, her immediate predecessors, responsible as they were for the “hostile environment” policy, the Windrush scandal and the subsequent failures to remedy matters in a timely way.

Will Ms Patel and her allies in the cabinet seek revenge on the courts by curtailing their powers to review maladministration and preserve human rights? No matter. The courts should continue to do their job and deliver justice for all.