Legal Action Magazine April edition highlights with Jawaid Luqmani, Sue Willman, Carolynn Gallwey and Jennifer Blair.

Immigration law and asylum support law legends Jawaid Luqmani, and Sue Willman,  relatively new legal action magazine writer Carolynn Gallwey of Bhatt Murphy and Jennifer Blair of Ukraine Advice Project UK talk with our host Simon Mullings.  

Transcript

Hello everybody and welcome to this legal action group podcast. My name is Simon Mullings and coming up in this April edition of the podcast we have immigration law and asylum support law legends Jawaid Luqmani, and Sue Willman will then talk to relatively new legal action magazine writer Carolynn Gallwey of Bhatt Murphy, about the police misconduct column. And lastly, we'll finish up with Jennifer Blair of number five barristers chambers, who was a co founder of the Ukrainian advice project, and has written about that project for April's legal action magazine. Marking legal action groups 50th anniversary, April's legal action magazine includes writing from Sue Willman and Jawaid Luqmani and we thought that we will get them onto the podcast to expand a little more on their long and illustrious years writing for legal action magazine. Jawaid, just in researching this part of the podcast, I learned that you started writing for the immigration law update in 1993. Is that correct?
I think that that could be right. I can't actually remember. I think it was somewhere between about 1992 and about 1995. But I have to track it back to where I was living, what sort of computer I was using, I should say what fountain pen I was using, so I can't actually remember a specific date.
Yeah, sadly, my crack research team didn't get down to that level of detail, but we think it was at 1993. Presumably, you were a reader of the column. Prior to that.
I was an avid reader for a very long time, and I was terribly jealous of those would always get the byline they thought, well, if I can't beat them, I'll join them.
Yeah, absolutely. So did you how did that come about? Did you were you pressganged? Or did you put yourself forward?
I think we I think I lost a bet really, probably involve Rick Scannell, who was then the main contributor to these articles dragging unsuspecting individuals off the street. And I happened to be on the street when he was dragging people in. I think he dragged myself and Chris ramble in. And the idea was to have a more comprehensive piece that looked at policy issues, rather than just a write up of the cases. Unfortunately, for me, both of them jumped off the raft at some stage and I'm left clinging to the wreckage.
Well, you've been doing it for a considerable amount of time, Joe Weider must give you some satisfactions?
Well, I'm hoping that if there is an afterlife, this will, this will be my penance as it were. And it certainly feels like after life and after life and afterlife. It's probably three life sentences. It's been fun. And it's been interesting. And it's been challenging, trying to catch up. But one of the advantages of having written for that length of time is that it means very little is new, you have similar themes coming back repeatedly policy changes that were ditched, and then being reintroduced again. And so sort of having a long longevity to it is sometimes helpful.
Yeah, yeah. And Sue, you, along with Steven Pierce, and the very sadly missed, Stephen Knafler, wrote the asylum support book in 2001, I think and then started the column about a year after is that right?
Yes, that's right. But before that, we I had written one off article because at that time, the then Tory government had decided to suddenly remove access to benefits and housing from the asylum seekers who were arriving in the late 90s. And I was working in Hammersmith and Fulham Law Centre, and we found ourselves with 10s Hundreds of asylum seekers coming to our doors, they were sleeping on sofas, they were eating out of dustbins, and we were getting lots of urgent injunctions and judicial reviews and there wasn't anything written about it. So LaGG agreed to be the host for that article.
It's a really fascinating point, Sue, and I just wondered. So at that time, was there any other forum for discussing asylum support issues?
Well, the interesting thing about asylum support was no one was quite sure who should do it. Should it be immigration lawyers, or should it be housing lawyers. And the thing that was fantastic was that lawyers from housing law practitioners Association and immigration law practitioners Association, came together with some leadership from Simon Cox of Doughty Street Chambers, and Anne Mcmerde, who's now at Bernberg's and Sonal Golani. And we formed this little group called housing and immigration group, because faced with the home office, I think the only way to survive is to get your troops together. And that's what immigration lawyers do. That's what housing lawyers do. And that's what HC has done.
Yes, absolutely. And I'm sure we'll see the housing and immigration group come to the fore again, in relation to the current Ukrainian crisis as well. So Jawaid, just bearing in mind the amount of time that you have been doing these updates, are there any landmark events that stand out during that period that the updates have covered?
Think it's very difficult to pick any single moment out in terms of landmark because it's more sort of landslide or landslip. We've looked at some of the cases that have been covered over that period of time, the most significant of which is probably the contempt proceedings in which the Home Secretary Government Minister was for the very first time found to be in contempt of court. And that Parliament was not or the executive were not supreme in that sense.
And what do you think the Legal Action magazine updates at bring to people that they won't get anywhere else? Given that, you know, case reports are available elsewhere? What  unique value do you think the legal action updates bring to colleagues,
I think it's just trying to put the jigsaw piece together before it becomes a new jigsaw all over part of the aim is to try to ensure that we keep people as up to date as possible, wherever we can, over a range of issues, including policy changes, things that may have been introduced by the legal aid agency, that will affect a number of number of those that are providing advice, as well as discussions that may have been ongoing with organisations , or indeed, just looking at the rule changes themselves. And I think that it's an indication of quite how significant those changes have been, and how frequent that they are, that there isn't enough time to look at the more favourable aspects of consultation. It's really just been about trying to keep our head above water with the changes that are coming in.
Yeah, yeah. And Sue, how would you characterise the aims? The primary aims of the asylum support update?
Well, we have to remember that legal action isn't just read by lofty Barristers. it's read by advice workers, it's read by parliamentary researchers. it's read by campaigners. And so what I love about it is that it's a place where you can find out what's happening in the law and in relation to policy. And you can get the latest information all in one place. Back in the late 90s. When we started writing about this, it wasn't so easy to find stuff on the internet. And now, there's so much information on the internet that it's quite hard to find the latest information. So Legal Action remains a great place to go. And I think of it as crevasse law. If you imagine that you're a climber, and you're looking for the gaps in the rock to get to the top of the mountain. We were always looking for gaps in the law. We were looking at the Human Rights Act, we're looking at the Equality Act, just as mainstream immigration lawyers have done to enable their clients to be able to stay in the UK and settle here. We're always trying to push the boundaries of the law. And that's what's been exciting about what we've been able to do with the help of lag through the sun support textbook through training through the updates. And I was lucky because when I came became burned out I had colleagues like Sasha rozanski and Deborah Gellner at least some supports peels project and Laurie tam carton who took over the writing of the update but that's that's the idea. Do a bit but we're passing on information to other lawyers who can come up with new ideas and carry on struggle against unjust and inhumane policies. Because we certainly have had some successes along the way in the field of social economic rights and cause to celebrate
Well, crevasse law, what a wonderful metaphor. Sue, I shall be stealing that on the first available opportunity. And I shall also henceforth see myself as something of a rock climber rather than the sedentary overweight lawyer that unfortunately I am. Question for both of you. Now, do you get case reports sent in to you by colleagues? Is that something that you encourage and welcome?
Sadly, I get nothing at all. Nobody likes me. So nobody send me,
Well, I don't think anybody's buying that job. It must be that you're so accomplished that nobody else feels worthy.
In the beginning for us in the era of cyber support, there wasn't much law. So yeah, we certainly did need to hear from colleagues about what might be happening in lower courts and tribunals. And we're always keen to hear about the latest case, and housing and immigration group is a good place. They're just
interested in what Sue said there about, there's not much law in the area. And indeed, anyone that reads the piece that I've written, might be interested and amused to know that that was the position taken by some people some 35 years ago. So I'd say Sue, there's a lot more law to come like it or not.
Well, Jawaid, I wonder if whether we could change the weather on this a bit or not. And whether you would welcome submissions in from colleagues with case law reports.
I mean, I certainly think that the circulation of information is valuable. And when it's only coming from one source, then that can that that can be very limiting.
Sue, are you still writing for the assignment support update?
No, I have succeeded in encouraging my colleagues to take over in the last decade, I'm pleased to say,
Would you give me their names and telephone numbers? Desperate to get out of the process? Okay,
well, while Jawaid hatches  escape plan as Sue, can you let us know if any updates are coming up in asylum support more.
So my colleagues that Dyson Pearson Glynn have just this week, succeeded in a case against the home office his latest way of making refugees miserable, which is to seize their mobile phones, a blanket policy of seizing mobile phones, but has been bound to be unlawful both in relation to Public Law having a secret policy, and in relation to Article eight, the Human Rights Convention and also in relation to the Data Protection Act. And there's also the continuing poor accommodation which asylum seekers from countries like Yemen, Horn of Africa, and Afghanistan have been put into, and no doubt Ukrainians will also face it's time for the home office to commission adequate accommodation. will
thank you to you and your colleagues at Dayton Pierce Glen Zoo. And we look forward to reading about that very important case very soon. So don't wait while we do still have you here. Do you know what's coming up in your next update?
The next update is going to be the new 202 pages of rules that landed on my desk about a week and a half ago. And for which I'm being chased for my piece, which I hadn't done two weeks ago, because I said there was almost nothing coming out. And then about a day later, for that I am 202 pages came out. And so I'm now behind schedule. So I probably won't be able to have any more time to speak to you today, Simon because otherwise, somebody else said the magazine will start shouting at me.
Well, we'll see what we can do to get you a temporary pass Jawaid. But we are very grateful for your time and yours, too Sue. Thank you both so much for the work that you've done over the years and the work that you continue to do. And thank you enormously for coming and speaking to us on the podcast. Thanks once again. Thank you. So we have Carolynn Galwey now who is here to talk to us about police misconduct update in legal action magazine. But Carolynn understand that you are new to the team writing the updates for police misconduct. So how did that come about?
That's right. This is my first time I'm contributing to the update although I have been really using it avidly for around 20 years, which is as long as I've been with Bhatt  Murphy, I think it's a it's a natural progression for me to come to be writing about these stories, which matters so much to our area of law.
Absolutely. So Bhatt Murphy obviously have a long and honourable tradition of writing for this update, but also for LAG, generally So was it was it through working in Bhatt Murphy that you came to be writing for the magazine?
Yes, it was. I've been involved in like training courses over the last few years. And it seemed that this wasn't a natural extension of that. And I've also been working with Tony Murphy on preparing some sections of a LAG book. So this all seems to be very much part and parcel of that aspect of our work.
That's great. Okay, so turning to April's edition of the magazine. I mean, there's loads of really, really interesting cases. But one of the ones that I picked out, in particular, it's Canon versus the Director of Public Prosecutions. What's that one about? Carolyn?
Well, this is a really sad case, actually. And it's one I think that would resonate with those of us who represent the families that people have died in custody, because of the themes that it pulls together, which I'm afraid are sadly, quite familiar. So firstly, you have prisoner who's making clear statements of suicidal ideation. And then you have what adds up to a series of particularly stark failures to act to protect him from from himself. And it should be known to people who work in this area that where somebody is making active preparations for suicide, as opposed to, you know, expressing distress generally, or even talking about ending their life. Generally, those active preparations invoke a really high risk, there's actually preparation suggests a real an immediate risk to their life that should have triggered a care plan to protect him. Yeah. And it would have been relatively simple to do that by, for example, putting him in a safer cell by removing things that he might have ligature it with putting him on constant watch, that kind of thing, sometimes even just giving people a phone call to family. Yeah. What we saw instead, was that not a great deal at all was done really, they really didn't take a lot of an obvious steps to protect him and they are afraid the inevitable occurred and that he did hanged himself. So precisely what might have been expected to happen?  Goodness me, I think the other point on that is that the is the lack of a prosecution is one of the features of our work that we so infrequently See, prosecutions in cases involving deaths in custody. And it's a real failure, I think of the state to address the reasons why those deaths occur.
Important to know, the legal updates in legal action magazine are not all about the stunning victories. And because it's very important to know the way in which cases are going I guess,
Absolutely. And I think this one sits alongside a lot of other recent decisions, cases about prosecutorial decision making.
Okay, and then next up, I think this is a Supreme Court decision. So again, very important, and this is Bloomberg LP versus Zed X C. What can you tell us about this one? Currently, yes,
this one, this case got a lot of attention in the press. And I think it was because it was painted as a bit of a blow to press freedom. But actually, there were some features of this case, which meant that it really wasn't as simple as all of that. Bloomberg appear to have got hold of a letter of request, which is an international request for cross jurisdictional cooperation, which are exchanged between law enforcement agencies in different countries as a kind of a precursor to a criminal investigation, and they're confidential in order to kind of encourage cooperation. And somehow Bloomberg, the news outlets got a copy of this and published it almost intact. I don't think they did much research around it. Rather, unsurprisingly, the the President was named in the article and who was apparently the subject of the letter of response, took proceedings against them to have his name removed. And it went all the way to the Supreme Court. Because in the lower courts, they found that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy as the as the subject of a criminal investigation. And  that remains the principle that that was upheld by the Supreme Court. And the fact that the letter of response was confidential, they found to be relevant. But that wasn't the whole the whole story.
But I understand just looking at the comment, as well, I understand there's a sort of a competing rights kind of issue as well arising out of it.
Yes, that the the public interest should be weighed against his his interest as a private individual, and his expectation of privacy and where he had a reasonable expectation of privacy, that that can trump the public interest. And it would always be a balancing act, I guess, for the courts to just strike between those two competing interests.
Okay. Now, then, of course, police misconduct is very much in the news at the moment, what would the child Q case and I just note that there is in fact, an intimate search case in the updates? Is it your view that this current focus on the issue is going to give rise to many more cases or how do you think it's going to play out?
Well, I think one of  the sad things about childcare is that this is not not that it was so unusual. But that this is something that's been happening for a number of years. But that finally, people have come to a point where they don't appear to be willing to accept that that's how policing should operate in this country. And I think this is part of a long overdue conversation that started with George Floyd and has echoed through multiple stories from big stories to small stories that have been reported recently. And over the course of the last year or two people are, It's dawning on the on the wider population that you know that there's a lot that is wrong with the way that policing is organised in this country structurally, institutionally. And that themes of misogyny, Sexual Offences by police officers, racism, and stop and search, all of those things are very much in the forefront of people's minds and in fact, come together. I think, in a lot of ways in the child queue case, you know, that obviously relates to an intimate search and the case that you refer to the case of Owens touches on the definition of what constitutes an intimate search and sort of a complacency and assuming that the police will be able to deal with things like this sensitively and appropriately and lawfully. And in fact, what we should be doing is challenging whether what they're what they're doing is is appropriate, proportionate and within the law.
Well, Carolyn, look, thank you very much indeed for talking to us about these really fascinating cases, as we say to all the authors, thank you so much for for writing them, you know, really clear and lucid summaries and so helpful, Carolyn, once again, thank you so much. And welcome to the lag teams. Well, thank you very much. Thank
you. Glad to be here.
Okay, so now let's move straight to Jennifer Blair. So Jennifer, you've written about the Ukraine Advice Project in April's magazine, you I understand you're a co founder. So tell us about the other members of the group and how it came about please.
Yeah, so it was set up by myself by Miranda Butler, who's a barrister at Landmark Chambers. Simon Cox is a Barrister at Doughty Street, Alex Piletska who's a solicitor at Turpin and Miller and John Vassiliou who is a solicitor at Shepherd Wedderburn in Scotland, and CJ McKinney, who is an editor at Free Movement. So we had to have different skills, different experiences. And John obviously has experience working in Scotland as well, which is really useful when they sort of, for example, setting up their super sponsor scheme in Scotland, that kind of thing. And we set it up we were at Alex's house warming in Oxford, and we were talking about how there really needed to be an urgent response to the invasion and Ukraine and the sort of developing refugee issue that the UK is responsive being a boarded one, unlike the rest of Europe, so people going to have to be making individual applications and there wasn't sufficient information for people on how to do that and what the problem is with that were. So we kind of planned and set up the project. And
that's really interesting. So I mean, so you were there at this sounds like an excellent housewarming event. But of course, you're seeing these events unfold. But because of all your skills and knowledge and expertise, you can see the problems that are going to arise, I guess,
the idea is we would set something up quickly. And we thought we might get a few inquiries, we would respond to them ourselves, we might broken some of our friends. And then when it launched, we were getting hundreds of inquiries a day. It was one bit where I was in the advice inbox, and it seemed like an inquiry was coming in every minute. Some other people helped us kind of with the admin, so particularly Jonathan Holt at God and cordoned off helped us with the sort of coordination of it for those first couple of weeks. And then we were hoping to hand it on to somewhere else. So eventually DLA Piper who coordinate the Afghan Advice Project now took on this as well for the advice matching and volunteer coordination.
Amazing work. And I guess that kind of teamwork between well, first of all, between all of you as co-founders, but then as you say, bringing in ILPA bringing in DLA Piper bring it you know, bringing in Garden Court North, all of that helps I guess with dividing up all the different roles.
It really helps that we we have confidence in each other already as well, because we were doing things at such speed that it wasn't time we were in a WhatsApp group and we would say right, this you do you deal with this? So someone would go off and write something we didn't all have time to check everything but we all knew we'd be happy to put our names to each other's work kind of thing. Yeah. Then we dealt with the administration through a discord channel, which when we started we all just had our personal like computer gaming profile. Perfect, you know.
It's Miranda Butler. You know, war Goddess 3000 then really is amazing, you know? Well, we
Yeah, pretty much Actually, I think Simon was a bit taken aback by these these very geeky lawyers are calling in with will because he was he was doing a lot of proactive work on Ukraine, and we kind of like ended up all working together. But yeah, in our WhatsApp group was a lot of like computer games and Dungeons and Dragons jokes, and I'm not sure he knows what's hit him.
Fantastic. Absolutely. I mean, these are the details our listeners are here for. So thank you very much indeed for that, Jennifer. Okay, and how's the project going? I mean, how, how many queries? How many volunteers? Have you got
it? We are getting in the region of 200 inquiries a day we've matched. It's more than 1000. Like clients, we've matched with lawyers, it's probably around 1200 300. Now with another few 100 cases in the pipeline. And we try and ask lawyers to provide initial advice within two days of taking the case. And then sometimes it's too-ing and fro-ing. We have been because of the number of inquiries and the number of volunteers. I think we've got between us and DLA Piper more than 900 legal volunteers. There's about 430 immigration lawyers that we recruited them, we're giving advice, and then the others are from different commercial firms. And because of that, that the numbers we were just sort of linking inquiries up with appropriate people to give advice, and they're letting them kind of rock and roll. Sure. So some of them have done a lot of intensive casework with the person. So they've made the applications they followed up on delays. Some of them are, but all we're asking people to do is provide initial advice, thinking that there are people who just don't know what application to make some advice is better than no advice or misleading information.
Absolutely. But I understand there's been some kind of regulatory issues that you've had to surmount, or at least, sidestep might be the wrong word but you know, what I mean, to deal with any way to make this practical.
Yeah, so we had a lot of Barristers, who wanted to volunteer who weren't authorised to conduct litigation weren't direct access accredited, and it would have just been too resource intensive to kind of instruct them to do it, or to get up the kind of infrastructure that Advocate has put in place to allow them to do that. But the initially, the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland issued an exemption for Scottish advocates to give advice without director access accreditation, and then the BSB did in England and Wales as well. So it's meant that the barrister I mean, already initial advice is not the most regulated kind of legal activity, right, because it's not litigation. It's so and free initial advice. There is some provision for giving free initial advice and law centres, but it didn't cover our projects. We weren't an established Law Centre. So it that's been really helpful. And then the office of the Immigration Services Commissioner undertook a very rapid investigation about the Ukraine schemes produced a policy encouraging OSC either level one advisors to be able to give some advice on things like the family scheme, and specifically named our project and said that are advisors could volunteer with it, which is really helpful as well,
That's incredibly helpful. And also pathway leading for you know, then what you're doing, I'm sure will be a pathway for others to follow. So that's, that's, that's really valuable as well.
I think there's a gap in legal aid actually, for this kind of work. So it's hard to see how you deal with it, except once you some kind of project like this, it may be it makes me think there needs to be some more mainstream provision for something like this arising, that a lot of the people fleeing Ukraine are professional people, they had jobs, they have resources, in terms of legal aid eligibility are very confused. Legal Aid for immigration work in England and Wales is very restricted. And in Scotland, it's less restricted, but you still they still need to have the means evidence, things like that. And a lot of people just really need some advice and can do some of these applications themselves. Yeah,
absolutely. So in terms of the terms of the future of the project, at the time of recording this the we seem to be in a kind of phoney ceasefire at the moment, possibly. But how do you see the project continuing,
Unlike the EU countries that have set up a temporary humanitarian protection scheme, the UK has now got three designated each slightly different VISA schemes people are applying under them. There's a lot of people still waiting for a decision. So I think under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, they were they say that total number of applications was nearly 60,000, a couple of days ago, and they've only granted 25,000. So there's a lot of people waiting for a decision still so and then there's the Ukraine extension scheme, which is people who were on short term visas in the UK, they might have run out or they might just be in a very difficult situation. Now, that doesn't even start until May according to the immigration rules they've just brought in. So I think the legal situation is going to be very fiddly for quite a while for people here. And even and a lot of the people who contact us they don't want to be unable to go back to Ukraine. They say things like right I'm gonna come over then I'm going to go back and get my cat then I'm going to go back and get my degree. Yeah. It's safe. But then other people have had their homes destroyed. We've had a lot of contacts and elderly people who have joined children here. And if their homes are destroyed their health care needs, I think repeated displacement is unlikely to be realistic for them.