Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has made a last-ditch attempt to halt a bid in the High Court to remove asylum seekers from a protest-hit migrant hotel.
In a novel move, Ms Cooper has asked the judge for permission to intervene in Epping Forest District Council’s bid for a temporary injunction blocking asylum seekers from being housed at the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex.
Edward Brown KC, for the Home Office, said that “shortage of asylum accommodation is acute” and if Epping’s bid was successful “there could be similar applications made elsewhere, aggravating the pressures on the asylum estate”.
If granted, the injunction would mean the hotel’s owner, Somani Hotels Limited, must stop housing asylum seekers at the site within 14 days. The Home Office was not represented at a previous hearing in the case on Friday, but at the start of a hearing on Tuesday, at which Mr Justice Eyre is due to hand down his ruling on whether the injunction should be granted, the department asked to be allowed to intervene.
Mr Brown KC, for the Home Office, said: “If the injunction is granted by the court, it will substantially impact on the Home Secretary’s statutory duties.”
He continued: “The local authority should in fact have given some consideration to the wider public interest in this application.”He added that the injunction bid “causes particular acute difficulties at the present date”.
He admitted that the home secretary had not applied to join previous injunction applications made by other councils, but said there was “a very powerful reason” to do it in this case. Mr Brown KC said the court had not fully considered the wider impacts of the council’s application on the duty of the Home Office to provide accommodation for asylum seekers.
“The issues are so grave that the secretary of state believes it essential to bring it to the attention of the court. We accept it is novel”, Mr Brown KC said.
Philip Coppel KC, for the council, said the last minute bid to intervene was a “thoroughly unprincipled application”. “Its effect is to derail the court process, to upend the court’s delivery of your judgement”, he told the judge.
“It’s not enough to say we’ve got a problem, or a demand, without saying what’s on the other side to accommodate that demand,” Mr Coppel added. He argued that asylum seekers could be moved out of the hotel “comfortably” within a fortnight, adding: “If they can go in, they can go out”.
Mr Justice Eyre noted that the Home Office was notified of the injunction application on 12 August.
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