Receive free UK immigration updates
We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest UK immigration news every morning.
The UK justice secretary has told lawyers to “keep their politics to themselves”, in the latest attempt by ministers to pin part of the blame for the crisis in Britain’s asylum system on “lefty lawyers”.
Alex Chalk’s comments on Tuesday came as it emerged that about 20 asylum seekers refused to board the Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland, Dorset, after legal representations on Monday.
Chalk also said he thought it might be legal for the government to refuse to provide alternative accommodation to people refusing to move on to the barge, as political tensions rose.
Lee Anderson, deputy Conservative chair, told the Daily Express: “If they don’t like barges then they should f*** off back to France.”
Chalk gave an indication of the government’s increasingly abrasive approach to the migration issue when he launched a further attack on politically motivated lawyers and defended Anderson’s comments.
“In the last 10 years there’s been a growing and I think regrettable trend for lawyers to actively parade their politics and identify more with their clients,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He said it would be “much better for lawyers in the main to keep their politics to themselves” and said it was a mistake for them to be “enthusiastic about parading their political opposition”.
With polls showing the public believe the government has failed to grip the migration issue, ministers — including UK prime minister Rishi Sunak — have tried to claim that politically motivated lawyers are part of the problem.
The move is part of a wider political attack: Sir Keir Starmer, Labour leader, is a former head of the Crown Prosecution Service and Sunak has attempted to portray him as a “lefty lawyer”.
Chalk confirmed that a new task force would root out rogue immigration solicitors who provide coaching and services to people making false asylum claims. “People [who] are making stuff up deserve the full force of law,” he said.
He also said the government was “frustrated” by legal challenges to its asylum policy on individual cases, saying some of the challenges were “misguided, wrong-headed, last minute and completely misconceived”.
Chalk also claimed the government would be within its rights to withdraw accommodation from asylum claimants refusing to move into the barge moored on the Dorset coast. “I suspect that would be lawful,” he said.
“It’s not four star accommodation but it’s perfectly safe, decent,” he said. “It’s spartan a bit austere but frankly that’s not unreasonable.”
In a sign of the coarsening debate around the issue, Chalk defended Anderson’s outspoken comments. “Lee is expressing in salty terms things that people well understand,” he said. “There was nothing unreasonable in principal in what he was saying.”
The Home Office confirmed that 15 people had been moved successfully on to the Bibby Stockholm, which has a capacity of about 500, but that a group of around 20 refused to board.
The department’s director for asylum accommodation Cheryl Avery said she could not go into details “of the legal proceedings for each individual”.
In a sign of the government’s problems on migration, a YouGov poll found that just 9 per cent of people had confidence that ministers would reduce the number of asylum seekers crossing the Channel on small boats.
It also found that only 12 per cent thought any asylum seekers would ever be sent to Rwanda, with only 13 per cent thinking Suella Braverman, home secretary, was doing a good job.
