Judicial review will take place ‘before end of July’ but judge allows flights to start in meantime
The High Court judge who has ruled that Priti Patel’s inhumane ‘removal’ of asylum seekers to Rwanda can go ahead is the same who decided that the government’s discrimination against ‘legacy benefit’ claimants was acceptable.
Justice Swift decided that the flights can begin because they are in the ‘public interest’, despite the fact that a full judicial review is pending and might not yet take place for weeks – at some time before the end of July.
And in February, the same Justice Swift ruled that the government’s decision not to award the emergency £20 per week ‘uplift’, which the government mandated for Universal Credit claimants during the pandemic, to those that were still claiming ‘legacy benefit’ because the Tories haven’t yet moved them across to Universal Credit was discriminatory, but decided that the discrimination was ‘justified’.
The Tories’ decision had deprived people often in grinding poverty on legacy benefits of more than £1,500 compared to ‘UC’ claimants – and the judge’s decision let the Tories off the hook of having to make up the difference to those they had discriminated against.
Unite’s Howard Beckett summed up the one of many issues with these decisions:
Depriving the poor of vital cash was also legal, according to Justice Swift. But it was still wrong. The judicial system in this country, like the rest of the political system, is broken – and as always it is the poor and vulnerable who suffer.
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