Keir Starmer has hit back at Britain’s most senior judge, Baroness Carr, who criticised him for publicly opposing a controversial ruling by an immigration judge that allowed Gazan refugees to come to Britain under a scheme for Ukrainians. The Telegraph has more.
Sir Keir Starmer has become embroiled in a rare public row with Britain’s most senior judge over his criticism of an immigration decision.
Baroness Carr, the Lady Chief Justice, attacked the Prime Minister for his “unacceptable” criticism last week of an immigration judge who allowed Palestinian refugees to come to the UK from Gaza.
At a press conference on Tuesday, she said both Sir Keir and Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, had failed to “respect and protect” judges by publicly criticising the verdict as “wrong”.
She said she was “deeply troubled” by their comments and said she had written to Sir Keir and Shabana Mahmood, the Lord Chancellor, to remind them that politicians must respect judicial independence.
But on Tuesday night, the Prime Minister pushed back, repeating his previous comments that it was “for Parliament to make laws and for the Government to decide policy”.
“Where the law is not working as we think it should be, the Government will take action to tighten up the rules – and that is what we are doing,” a Government spokesman said. …
Mrs Badenoch and three former Tory government law officers also responded to Lady Carr, saying her intervention had been “extremely unwise”, “totally misguided” and “ludicrous”.
The Tory leader said: “Parliament is sovereign. Politicians must be able to discuss matters of crucial public importance in Parliament. This doesn’t compromise the independence of the judiciary. The decision to allow a family from Gaza to come to the UK was outrageous for many reasons.”
The case saw the judge allow a family of six seeking to flee Gaza to join their brother in Britain. He ruled that the Home Office’s rejection of their application made through the Ukraine Family Scheme breached their human rights.
It came as part of a series of cases exposed by the Telegraph where illegal migrants or convicted foreign criminals have used human rights laws to remain in the UK or halt their deportations.
Michael Ellis, a former Attorney General, said her intervention was “totally misguided and in my view unacceptable”.
“Frankly, if judges, especially quite junior judges, are going to try to make new law in highly sensitive political areas they should expect robust criticism,” he said.
Baroness Carr added:
It is not acceptable for judges to be the subject of personal attacks for doing no more than their jobs to find the facts on the evidence before them and apply the law as it stands to those facts.
If they get it wrong, the protection is a challenge on appeal. If the legislation is wrong, it is Parliament’s prerogative to legislate. It is really dangerous to make any criticism of a judgment without a full understanding of the facts and the law. The judgment is the only accurate source of information.
A directly related issue is security. Concerns over judicial security are at an all-time high. Unfair or sensational negative reporting creates real everyday risks to the safety and lives of judges and their families.
I am, as you know, fully committed to open justice and transparency in the justice system. I would hate to see the drive for transparency compromised or threatened through inaccurate reporting and unfair public comment.
That sounds suspiciously like a threat. She’s clearly completely clueless about what has gone wrong here. Parliament needs to take some proper action both to reform the asylum system and bring the over-mighty judiciary to heel. Fat chance under Starmer though.
Worth reading in full.
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“judicial independence“. Funny.
Starmer may or may not be being sincere. Depending on what you think the truth is, it could be seen as quite convenient to him and his predecessors going back decades that judges and civil servants seem to want our country to be invaded.
Decision was by a very junior judge should not be really regarded as a judge at all. Until about 10 years ago would have been called a chairman of an immigration tribunal. Know this as friend of mine after having children wanted a suitable part time job and I was one of her referees, and she was a bit embarrassed some years later to have the title of a judge.
Normally someone very junior in the system would be careful not to make new contrary groundbreaking decisions, but this seems the one area where all the judiciary do this, but when it comes to covid, lockdowns, HS2 etc. they do not want to get involved.
Wigs, briefs and quill pens at dawn. May the best bullshitter win.
I bet she’s got a dirty Angela Merkel calendar on her office wall.
“respect and protect” judges… Because nothing says deserving respect like a red cloak with a white furry collar.
Local newspapers, at least, are surprisingly reluctant to publish, in print or on line, articles or letters critical of court judgments. I had a fairly (I thought) innocuous comment in a local paper pulled by the website moderator on the tick-box grounds of “contempt of court”. It wasn’t even a comment on an individual case, but more on Crown Prosecution Service decisions to prosecute (or not), judges’ sentencing policy if the CPS achieved a conviction, and the follow-up when the jury return a not-guilty verdict. I didn’t follow the issue up (there were bigger ones around at the time) but I suggest that we are heading for problems of free speech suppression if we cannot comment on policy (or self-censor out of fear), let alone on individual case outcome, if such comment is critical of the judicial system or an individual judge.
I think we reached the point of “problems of free speech suppression” some time ago.
We are rapidly approaching the same situation as is evident in Germany.
It appears our two countries are engaged in a race to the bottom.
Is Starmer heading for a crisis with his stance on ECHR, and Carr and other judges nudging him towards that crisis? Successive governments have passed Acts of UK Parliament regarding refugees, immigration and border opening, citing a desire to comply with the ECHR and various UN edicts. Carr is really saying: this is the law as it stands, so if you want to change judicial outcomes you need to change the law, not just throw your toys out of your pram. He will then find himself either having to give more territory to the ECHR or grasp the nettle and defy the ECHR. The latter would provoke a fight not just politically but in the immigration, as there will be no end of lawfare cases brought by human rights lawyers handsomely paid by immigration “charities”.
Local newspapers are terrified of risking contept of court, which could bankrupt them.
The heat is on the labor party, and these judges giving wide berth to left ideologies and ideas, is dragging labor down.
Hardly surprising that Baroness Carr, Britain’s most senior judge, defends the Kritocracy = Rule By Judges, and “Legislating From The Bench”, which is what these judges have been doing for years, some immigration activists even bizarrely claiming that no law passed by Parliament, or presumably any order from the monarch, is valid until it has been “tested in court”.
Wow, you know a country is in trouble when its judiciary and its government start handbagging one another. What next folks?
Some years ago I was working in a UK embassy where a man who had applied several times for a visa as a tourist to the UK had been refused as it was strongly suspected he would falsely claim asylum. It went to appeal and the Immigration Judge found in his favour AND THE OFFICE WAS ORDERED TO ISSUE A VISA.
The man duly arrived in the UK where he – you’ll never guess – claimed asylum, a BIG black mark against the office issuing the visa!
When the office concerned suggested the judge should be told, the response came that ‘It will do no good. THE JUDGES AREN’T INTERESTED.’!
Well, there’s a surprise!!
Carr is correct. The Government should appeal this decision and test it in a higher court. It can, contemporaneously, look at tightening up the law. However it doesnt look like this Government wishes to appeal. Possibly because Starmer and Hermer are sympathetic to the decision and the jurisprudence behind it?
NO! Humanity must resist the Globalist Plan to create a GLOBAL KRITOCRACY = RULE BY JUDGES, everywhere on the blinking planet.
Nobody voted for judges, and they have no right to practice “JUDICIAL OVERREACH”, trying to force the people, their elected legislature, and their executive branch, whether it be president or monarch, to all bow down before the judiciary!!!
Especially when the judiciary so often acts upon mere whim, as Prof. McGrogan recently pointed out in the DS, bordering on insanity, in total defiance of anything remotely resembling “Justice”, and often in collusion with sinister political agendas, usually Left-wing.
And in the case of the outrageous, vindictive persecution of British Army Veterans who served so faithfully in the Northern Ireland War, while Catholic IRA Terrorists run free, given a blanket free pass by a CLOSET CATHOLIC PRIME MINISTER, and supported by a cohort of Catholics in the UK Parliament, the judiciary has become an agent of the Vatican, determined to overturn the Protestant Reformation.
It has become a total travesty, bordering on High Treason against the people and the nation.
Rt Hon David Davis MP » Army chiefs back calls for judicial review of Troubles ruling
“In a letter to The Telegraph, GENERAL LORD HOUGHTON, GENERAL LORD DANNATT, and ADMIRAL LORD WEST said the findings contradicted “natural justice” and risked the prosecution of “elderly retired soldiers”.
“This will ruin the lives of patriotic soldiers and allow the IRA to rewrite the history of the Troubles to its own advantage,” they wrote.
GENERAL TIM COLLINS, SIR BEN WALLACE, the Former Defence Secretary, and SIR DAVID DAVIS, the Tory MP, also signed the letter.”
These are honourable men, defending Britain’s Armed Forces.