London
London Council Breaches Human Rights Law After Subjecting Asylum Seeker to Degrading Treatment
A local authority has been found in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) after it subjected an asylum seeker to degrading treatment for a period of at least seven months.
A High Court judge ruled at the end of last month that Croydon Council breached Article 3 and 8 of the ECHR, under the Care Act 2014, in what is believed to be the first ruling in such a case where these duties overlap.
This is because the ECHR breaches were in response to how Croydon performed its Care Act 2014 duties in failing to assess the asylum seeker’s "accommodation-related" needs and failing to provide suitable accommodation for him and his family.
Garden Court Chambers (GCC) represented the claimant, named only as TMX, and were instructed by Monica Kreel of TV Edwards Solicitors.
In a release GCC said: “The lengthy and detailed judgment provides helpful guidance on the complex interplay between the obligations of a local authority under the Care Act [2014], and the obligations of the Secretary of State for the Home Department under Section 95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999.”
“It is also a rare example of a local authority being found in breach of Article 3 ECHR for its failure to comply with its duties to provide care and support, including accommodation.
“As far as we are aware, it is the first time that a local authority has been found in a reported judgment to be in breach of Article 3 ECHR by reason of a failure to perform its duties under the Care Act [2014].”
Articles 3 and 8 of the ECHR are aimed at ensuring “no one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”, and that “everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence”.
So the question before Mr Alan Bates, sitting as Deputy High Court Judge, was this: “Where an asylum seeker’s physical or mental condition is such that they have accommodation-related care needs, who is responsible for providing the accommodation for that person? Is it the local authority responsible under the Care Act 2014, or does responsibility lie with the Secretary of State under Section 95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999?”
The Claimant’s Case
TMX is a 50-year-old asylum seeker whose claim remains outstanding. He has progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) and functional neurological disorder. He also suffers from severe and varied nerve pain – called paraesthesia – and also has strong muscle spasms. He has described the pain he experiences as “agonising” and is a wheelchair user who cannot mobilise independently.
From June 2022, he had been accommodated by the Home Office under Section 95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 in one ensuite bedroom in an asylum hotel facility in the Croydon area. That single bedroom was shared with his wife and their two children.
GCC described this as “manifestly unsuitable” due to it being on the fourth floor as the lift could only just fit his wheelchair in and could not take him all the way back down to street level.
At the same time, the building had steps at the front and the platform lift was “out of order the majority of the time”, meaning TMX was in effect confined to the building, and at significant risk in event of fire.
GCC explained: “The bedroom was too small for him to store and use his disability-related equipment. The bathroom was inaccessible and did not have adapted toilet/shower facilities. The lack of space for him to mobilise using equipment meant he was bedbound.”
“The room was badly ventilated, and TMX would become unbearably hot in the summer months, exacerbating his MS symptoms. The room afforded TMX no privacy from his children for his personal care. His children had to look away, or wait in the communal hallway when his wife provided his personal care as he lay in bed.”
TMX’s case comes after the Byline Times as previously reported how 75% of councils have logged complaints about the conditions of asylum seeker accommodation, at a time when the Government had tabled plans to remove their ability to investigate those complaints.
In April last year, it was revealed that the Government planned to “legalise” ‘hazardous’ accommodation for asylum seekers by exempting refugee housing from licensing rules for homes of multiple occupations (HMOs).
HMO licences are one of the primary ways authorities ensure homes filled with large numbers of people they were not initially designed to fit aren’t a fire risk, dangerously overcrowded, damp, mouldy, or otherwise unsafe.
However, the Home Office has in the last week cancelled plans to remove housing protections for asylum seekers after a judicial review was brought by a number of claimants. It said: “It is longstanding government policy that we do not routinely comment on individual cases.
“If an individual does not have the right to be in the UK, we will make every effort to return to their country of origin or a safe third country.”
The Home Office did not respond to a request for a comment on TMX’s case.
The High Court Ruling
During the hearing, there was no dispute that TMX had eligible needs for care and support under the Care Act 2014, and a care package was in place at all relevant times. Indeed, Croydon’s own assessments acknowledged the unsuitability of the accommodation.
Where there was clarity needed was in the fact that while it was Croydon which was in fact accommodating TMX, the unsuitable property was provided by the Home Office. But on this point the court found in TMX’s favour, which was that the responsibility lies with the local authority.
In handing down his detailed judgment, Mr Bates explained: “The council should, when assessing the claimant’s needs for care and support including accommodation-related needs, have ignored any current or potential provision of accommodation for him under Section 95 [of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999].”
Having found that the council was responsible for accommodating TMX and his family, the judge went on to consider whether, by failing to provide suitable accommodation to him, had breached Article 3 and 8 of the ECHR.
He added: “I am satisfied that the claimant’s remaining in unsuitable accommodation interfered with his physical and psychological integrity to a high degree comparable to the level crossing the severity threshold for breaching Article 3.
“I have so found essentially because his remaining in that accommodation has been a ‘but for’ cause of various impacts on him which are intimately connected with the concept of ‘private life’ for the purposes of Article 8.
“Those impacts have, in my judgment, substantially prevented him from: (a) pursuing any meaningful personal development, and (b) developing relationships with other human beings and the outside world save for his immediate family with whom he lives.”
Monica Kreel, TMX’s solicitor from TV Edwards, said: "This is a fantastic judgment for our client and for other disabled asylum seekers. The High Court has recognised that Croydon Council, in ignoring our client’s dire accommodation and refusing to resolve the situation when it had a duty to do so, breached his Article 3 and 8 rights. He has now, finally, been moved to a small flat where he is receiving his care with dignity. "
For its part, Croydon said it has accepted the High Court ruling and apoligised to TMX. A spokesperson added: “Our resident was being housed by the Home Office in line with 2018 Home Office guidance for asylum seekers with care needs.
“Despite our attempts to provide the best possible social care, it is now clear that the unsuitable accommodation was a barrier to this. We are sorry that our resident had to go through the courts to get this outcome and we will of course be taking on board lessons from this case in our work with other residents.”
Panicked by Feinstein, Starmer and Lammy issue near-IDENTICAL Gaza statements
Candidacy of Jewish left-winger in Starmer’s seat prompts pair to issue statements trying to con pro-Palestinian voters – but they don’t even bother to tweak the wording significantly
Keir Starmer is rattled – and reportedly ‘raging’ – at the announcement that left-wing Jewish heavyweight Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC MP who fought apartheid under Mandela, is going to contest Starmer’s Holborn and St Pancras constituency at the next parliamentary election. Rightly so: Feinstein’s substance, integrity and principle cast a cold light on Starmer’s lack.
But the incompetence and arrogance of the Labour right can’t help showing through. Clearly someone among Starmer’s advisers has decided it’d be a good idea to finally issue a statement calling for a ceasefire in Gaza to try to mollify the huge numbers of voters who are outraged at Starmer’s sabotage of earlier parliamentary motions calling for one and his support for Israel’s ‘right’ to commit war crimes.
So he and Lammy duly issued statements – or, to be more precise, one statement with hardly any modification and with most of the relevant portions identical, word for word, including the final sentence:
Nobody’s buying what this pair are selling
Shoddiness, incompetence, panic, or just the basic inability in that essential Establishment skill of faking sincerity – whatever the mix, Starmer and his acolytes are just not very good. That may be fly in an interview with media giving them the usual easy ride, but it won’t fool voters furious at their complicity in Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, in Gaza.
Instead, it just shows how scared Labour is of a challenge by someone of substance, even in seats where they held a big majority last time round.
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Jewish former S African MP Feinstein will stand against Starmer in Holborn St Pancras
OCISA selects candidate to fight for ‘Labour leader’s seat at next parliamentary election
Andrew Feinstein speaking at the ‘Stop Starmer’ initiative in London’s Conway Hall last year
The OCISA group formed with the aim of ousting so-called ‘Labour leader’ Keir Starmer has selected Corruption Watch UK director Andrew Feinstein, a Jewish former South African MP and adviser to Nelson Mandela, to stand against Starmer in Holborn and St Pancras in the next general election. Feinstein now lives in the seat.
Feinstein. the son of Holocaust survivors, has a long record of substance and principle that stands in stark contrast to his ‘broken every promise’ opponent, who is known as a ‘long-time servant of the security state’ and became known as the ‘kid starver’ after breaking promises to end the hated ‘universal credit’ benefit system and saying he would not end Tory benefit cuts that have put hundreds of thousands of children into poverty and hunger.
Feinstein has also consistently stood against Israel’s apartheid and genocide in Gaza, arguing that the same tactics his ANC party in South Africa used to bring down apartheid there must be used against Israel and pointing his social media followers to information about Israel’s slaughter of innocents. Starmer, in contrast, has said Israel has the ‘right’ even to impose the blockade on Gaza that is causing horrific starvation and disease.
Despite Labour’s significant majority in previous elections in the seat, the candidacy of someone with such substance and track record must be seen as a threat to Starmer’s position, particularly in a seat where one in six voters are Muslims and even more so in the light of South Africa’s leading role in the fight against the Gaza genocide – and soon against the UK’s complicity. The campaign is likely to be supported by large numbers of people from the constituency and around the UK, who are outraged at Starmer’s complicity in genocide and his abetting of the Tories’ assault on our rights and freedoms in the UK.
Starmer and his team are said to be ‘raging’ at the news and deeply concerned:
Those who wish to donate to Feinstein’s campaign fund can do so here.
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Bookies slash Galloway Rochdale odds to 2/1
Reaction against Labour candidate and warm welcome for Workers’ Party GB hopeful cuts odds from 16/1
Betting companies have slashed their odds against George Galloway winning the Rochdale by-election from 16/1 to 2/1 after the campaign saw the Workers’ Party GB candidate’s warm welcome contrast starkly with the hostile reception given to the Starmerite candidate, especially by local Muslims.
The phenomenon aligns with the catastrophic national fall in Labour Westminster voting intention among Muslims voters who voted Labour in 2019 – from 86% then to half that now – because of their outraged at Keir Starmer’s appalling support for Israel’s genocide and other war crimes in Gaza.
Not the Andrew Marr Show presenter Crispin Flintoff, who has been in Rochdale covering Galloway’s campaign, said:
I am still buzzing over what I saw around George Galloway’s campaign. There were hundreds of people at the launch and his campaign is extremely well organised. At the same time, other parties and candidates seem to be in disarray.
Starmer’s advisers have anonymously admitted that they fear the the impact of their enthusiasm for apartheid Israel, despite the ICJ’s findings against Israel for genocide, on the vote among Muslims and others horrified by the mass slaughter of Palestinians civilians in Gaza, mostly women – as well as the more general issue of the Labour right’s rampant Islamophobia and racism – and have already been proven correct in London boroughs and other areas after catastrophic local election results.
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Anti-Fascist Group Takes on London Conservative Mayoral Hopeful Susan Hall, Branding Contender a ‘Racist’
A leading anti-fascist organisation has launched a campaign to “take on” Conservative mayoral candidate Susan Hall AM at the London mayoral election this May.
HOPE not hate kicked off their on-the-ground activism against the Sadiq Khan-opponent on Wednesday by leafleting at stations around London, accusing the Conservative mayoral hopeful of racism, in no small part due to her controversial statements on social media.
A spokesperson for HOPE not hate said the group has “exposed her racist social media history”. That includes the Harrow-based politician having liked a tweet saying ‘It's never too late to get London Back!'. The picture was an image of the late Conservative MP Enoch Powell with the quote "It's never too late to save your country". This was not a quote from 'rivers of blood' speech-giver Powell but a slogan that was once on the British National Party website.
She has also previously liked a tweet from a user suggesting Enoch Powell should have been Prime Minister, saying they'd like Enoch Powell to be an addition to a pack of Prime Minister playing cards.
Other examples pointed to by the group include quote-tweeting an article from “notorious right-wing misinformation site” The Gateway Pundit, alleging a conspiracy to steal the 2020 US presidential election from Trump.
And she replied to a tweet from far-right commentator Katie Hopkins calling Sadiq Khan "our nipple height mayor of Londonistan" with an endorsement, saying: "Thank you Katie!". "Londonistan" is the term used to convey the idea that Muslims are taking over London.
Hall also liked a reply to a tweet about Sadiq Khan's anti-violence against women and girls strategy that said "Well said Susan, that Labour Traitor RAT Likes that sort of thing" – being female genital mutilation and violence against women and girls. This is racially charged implying that Muslims support FGM and violence.
Challenged about her social media activity on LBC last September – in particular the Enoch Powell meme and Katie Hopkins tweets – Hall told the LBC Radio phone-in she “can’t remember” doing so, adding: “I tweet, or I used to, all the time.”
“When I retweeted, oh no I think I liked it. I don’t know, this was a long time ago. That wasn’t in my mind, and I’m glad you given me the opportunity to say…”
Interviewer Nick Ferrari interjected: “I think you did, you retweeted it.” Hall replied: “I retweeted? I have no idea.”
She denied she was a supporter of the former Conservative provocoteur Enoch Powell, adding: “If you’re a serial tweeter, you tend to go through liking all sorts of things, and you sometimes read things and don’t see. If anybody is offended, then obviously, I would apologise.”
In October 2023, Hall was urged to apologise after that claiming Jewish communities in London were "frightened" by Sadiq Khan. The London Assembly member made the comments at a Conservative Friends of Israel at the Conservative party conference in Manchester.
Prior to selection the Conservative Assembly member liked a tweet saying that Sadiq Khan is "begging for Londoners to do a Tower Hamlets postal vote for May next year and we all know how that works. #fraud" – effectively accusing Sadiq Khan of electoral corruption and promoting the idea that Muslims in electoral politics subvert democratic principles.
And she has liked tweets targeting journalists, including on branding Sky's Matthew Thompson, then at LBC, a "virus".
Georgie Laming, Director of Campaigns at HOPE not hate said: “Susan Hall is clearly not fit to represent a diverse and multicultural city like London.
“Her social media activity is some of the most egregious we’ve seen from a Conservative candidate, and that’s why we’ll be taking her on this election.”
At the end of last year the campaign group polled over 1,000 Londoners and found that 64% believed Susan Hall’s social media conduct was “racist”. The group says it will be using “some of the most advanced voter analysis available” to identify areas in each constituency that might be most receptive to hard-right politics, and to target them with anti-Hall material.
Susan Hall’s team was contacted for comment.
Do you have a story that needs highlighting? Get in touch by emailing josiah@bylinetimes.com
Labour ‘shuts out’ Black MPs and groups from ‘race equality’ launch
Black MPs and groups were ‘shut out’ of Keir Starmer’s ‘race equality’ launch last night. Several had expected to attend the event in Tottenham, but were not given the new location after Starmer and Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy cancelled the original meeting to avoid facing protesters eager to challenge them over their support for Israel’s war crimes.
Black paper The Voice has reported that:
Black MPs, community media and leading campaign groups were not invited, leading to accusations from party members we spoke to that the Labour party intentionally excluded them in a bid to censor opportunities to grill party leader Keir Starmer and equalities secretary Anneliese Dodds preventing any real scrutiny of the Race Equality Act plans which were launched back in 2020.
This appears to have left Doreen Lawrence, a Starmer supporter, as essentially the only Black attendee – and ensured that no Black MPs or activists who might have challenged Starmer and his equalities spokeswomen Anneliese Dodds about the lack of substance in their ‘plan’.
Diane Abbott, Britain’s first Black woman MP, dismissed Labour’s plan as ‘window dressing’:
The proposed Race Equality Act is just window dressing. The foremost Black media organisation, The Voice, was not invited to the launch and most Black MPs were excluded. This reveals the reality of where Keir Starmer’s Labour party really stands on fighting anti-Black racism.
Even the paper-thin plan is unlikely ever to come to fruition under habitual promise-shredder Keir Starmer.
Labour’s issues with Black people and other racialised groups under Keir Starmer go back to the beginning of his tenure, when he named an all-white ‘diversity panel’ and excluded Labour’s most senior ethnic minority staffer. Since then, the party has been embroiled in rampant Islamophobia, attacks on Black women MPs and other senior elected figures, wholesale deselection of Black councillors and blocking of Black candidates in areas with large Black communities and more, as well as disgraceful racism toward Gypsy Roma people and naming an entirely male, entirely white panel to select local authority election candidates.
This report is true. I can confirm that Black journalists were excluded too.
https://t.co/G4BUu9hXXA
— Nadine White. (@Nadine_Writes) February 6, 2024
The party has also done nothing to root out the embedded racism exposed by the Forde Report, which Starmer reluctantly commissioned under pressure, then ignored when he could no longer delay its publication.
Read the full story on The Voice here.
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‘Cold, horrible’ Starmer fails to impress even ‘select’ audience after fleeing Gaza protest
‘Equality’ policy launch flops after even hand-picked audience finds him jingoistic and unpleasant
‘Cold and horrible’ – and spineless – Starmer at his ‘jingoistic’ policy launch
Keir Starmer delivered his latest policy con to a hand-picked audience and no press on Monday – after cancelling his main launch because of a planned pro-Palestinian protest, outside the original Tottenham venue, against his support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza – and it flopped.
According to Sky’s Serena Barker-Singh, even though Labour had winnowed down the audience to a ‘select’ few and excluded all the media, the ‘favoured’ attendees found Starmer ‘cold and horrible’ and his presentation ‘jingoistic’, with ‘union jacks everywhere’.
Starmer becomes less popular the more people see of him and it seems his advisers recognise that – but even hiding him from all but a few true believers doesn’t work, because they find themselves disliking him too.
And with Starmer’s record of breaking every promise, his ‘policy’ to supposedly improve equality is as meaningless as the fetid air it takes to speak it.
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Labour cancels Starmer/Lammy event rather than face Gaza protest
Yet again ‘Labour’ leadership unwilling to face anger of voters
Keir Starmer and Shadow Home Secretary David Lammy appear to be running scared yet again of the anger of protesters demanding a halt to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The pair were due to appear in Tottenham this afternoon for a policy announcement, but Skwawkbox understands that the press conference has now been cancelled after details of the venue and meeting time leaked and human rights activists planned to gather at the event to protest at Starmer’s support for Israel’s mass murder of Palestinian civilians.
The cancellation is one of a number of events abandoned by Labour rather than face the outrage of those who simply want an end to the slaughter. Keir Starmer has still not even mentioned the International Court of Justice findings against Israel in the genocide case brought by South Africa, such is his inability to justify his stance or face the reality of Israel’s war crimes, though he has used his social media to post repeatedly about business and football.
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Protest planned in Tottenham as location of Starmer’s latest ‘pledge’ leaks
Starmer’s ‘equality’ promise is a farce after years of unpunished racism in the Labour right – and Starmer’s support for Israel’s genocide
Keir Starmer and local MP David Lammy will appear in Tottenham between 1pm and 3pm on Monday for what is expected to be Starmer’s announcement of his latest ‘pledge’ – this one promising equal pay protection for ethnic minority groups.
Starmer’s record shows that any ‘promise’ will be worth nothing and jettisoned as soon as convenient – but his decision to stage his blether in one of London’s most diverse boroughs, while he continues to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza and has not even mentioned the International Court of Justice’s binding orders on Israel to stop the slaughter, has prompted outrage and a planned protest:
Starmer’s regime has constantly ignored racism, misogyny and abuse from the right-wing faction that has destroyed the party as a meaningful opposition, often protecting alleged perpetrators – even paedophiles – and covering up even the most serious allegations, while doing nothing to act against perpetrators exposed by the Forde Report. His latest disposable pledge is clearly a feeble attempt to con diverse groups that he cares a jot about their best interests – and his decision to hold it at the centre named after Labour’s first Black MP, who would no doubt have regarded him with contempt, adds insult to injury.
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Uni ‘urgently investigating’ pro-Israel professor who told Greenstein ‘all Jews should be gassed’
Justin Stebbing says he was clearly speaking ironically in attack on left-wing, pro-Palestinian Jew Tony Greenstein – but went on to say Greenstein would have been ‘thrilled’ to murder all Jews during WWII
A professor at Imperial College is being ‘urgently’ investigated by the university after sending emails to left-wing Jewish pro-Palestinian activist Tony Greenstein about ‘gas[sing] all Jews.
Greenstein is a Brighton-based human rights campaigner who received a suspended sentence last year in a farcical trial for criminal damage to an Israeli-owned weapons factor when no damage occurred and who has been further targeted by anti-terror police for saying he supports the struggle of Gazans for freedom. He told Skwawkbox that he didn’t know who Stebbing was when he first received an email, from a personal email address, linking to discredited claims of mass rape and mutilation by Hamas and saying that Stebbing ‘agree[d] with you [Jews] should all be gassed‘.
Greenstein reported the incident to police as hate speech, but then realised Stebbing is an academic and, assuming his email had been hacked, contacted him on his university address to let him know. Greenstein said he was astonished when Stebbing wrote back – from his official email – to attack him further.
Stebbing retorted that he was being ‘ironic’ when he made his comment – but claimed that Greenstein would have been ‘thrilled to gas all Jews’ if he had been alive during the Second World War:
“My e mail was pure irony, but as always here the response to the crime is blamed. I have zero doubt that in WW2, you ,would have been thrilled to gas all Jews. That was the point I was making.”
The email headers showed that the email was genuinely from an Imperial email account. Greenstein accordingly sent a complaint to the university, which received an email acknowledgment.
Skwawkbox contacted Prof Stebbing about his emails to Greenstein. He responded:
The reason I wrote to Tony Greenstein was him contacting several senior colleagues accusing them of being doctors for genocide. He was of course aware he had just written that e mail and would and should have understood my e mail as being ironic in that context. We have had previous contact. Tony Greenstein knew that he’d written that so would have understood the context and this affects the meaning of what I wrote and it was clear, as I’d said, I was being ironic.
On Stebbing’s allegation that Greenstein had previous contact with him, Greenstein said:
They were doctors opposing a BMA statement calling for a ceasefire and accusing Israel of having broken international law including his colleague at Imperial. Yes I accused them of being Doctors 4 Genocide. There was an article in the Jewish Chronicle (see below) naming them. However Stebbing wasn’t named and I didn’t contact him. So it’s a lie that we have had previous contact. I’ve searched my email and his name doesn’t come up and it’s an unusual name so I would see immediately.
All these doctors say they have resigned from the BMA which is a good thing. Good riddance as Ghada Karmi said.
He added:
I emailed Stebbing to let him know that someone was clearly impersonating him. You could have blown me down with a feather when he responded saying that I was wrong. He wasn’t being impersonated. It was him. An ultra Zionist lunatic.
An Imperial College spokesperson told Skwawkbox that it was ‘urgently investigating this case involving a Visiting Professor’:
There is no place for antisemitic or hateful behaviour of any kind at Imperial. We are urgently investigating this case involving a Visiting Professor.
The International Court of Justice is expected to give a decision on South Africa’s application under the Genocide Convention for an order to Israel to stop its slaughter, which has killed and maimed more than a hundred thousand Palestinians, mostly women and children, as well as 117 journalists and more than 150 United Nations staff.
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