UK defends deportation flight to Jamaica despite outcry

The UK Guardian is reporting that Downing Street has dismissed concerns about a deportation flight to Jamaica as the preoccupation of a “Westminster bubble” and vowed to press ahead with an inquiry into the use of judicial review.

After a court judgment forced the government to remove more than half the people on the flight list, the prime minister’s press secretary said reaction to the case showed that “certain parts of Westminster still haven’t learned the lessons of the 2019 election,” according to the news report.

The flight to Jamaica took off early on Tuesday with 17 deportees on-board.

Downing Street was reported as saying that 25 people were prevented from being deported as a result of the court ruling.

Originally, about 50 had been expected to be on-board.

The chancellor, Sajid Javid, robustly defended the decision to go ahead with the flight on Tuesday, saying those on-board were not members of the Windrush generation but offenders who posed a risk to the public.

“These are all foreign national offenders – they have all received custodial sentences of 12 months or more. They are responsible for crimes like manslaughter, rape, dealing in class-A drugs,” Javid told BBC Radio 5 live.

According to The Guardian, the prime minister’s press secretary later dismissed concerns about the flight and highlighted the government’s intention to review the use of judicial review to challenge ministerial decision-making.

“The Westminster bubble’s view of people trying to halt this flight with judicial reviews makes the case perfectly to the public about why such a review is needed,” he said.

On Monday night, a Court of Appeal judge ordered the Home Office not to carry out the scheduled deportation amid concerns that mobile phone outages had prevented detainees from having access to legal advice.

Lady Justice Similar reportedly indicated that those detainees should not be removed unless the Home Office was satisfied they “had access to a functioning non-O2 Sam card on or before February 3”.

The action was brought because there had been a problem with the O2 phone network in the Heathrow detention centres since last month, meaning many detainees had been unable to exercise their legal right to contact their lawyers.

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