#dvorzak

1pm. Nashua NH bus to Logan. 6.05pm Lufthansa, Logan to Franfort. 7.20am Arrive Frankfort 10.05am Lufthansa, Frankfort to Prague. 11.05am, arrive Prague. Mini bus to hotel. Arrival 12pm ish. Prague; my first European trip. A tour seemed a good way to initiate. Previously, travel was college, or family. The journey started after losing my husband of 20+ years. (See previous posts). Research…

Colin Yeo’s commentary on UK case Xue v Secretary of State was first published on 2 April 2015, and it is reprinted with permission from the Free Movement blog.

In the case of Xue v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWHC 825 (Admin) the Home Office claimed that the court had no “superhero” jurisdiction and could not or should interfere with the right of the Secretary of State indefinitely to detain a foreign national. Happily for the woman concerned, who was detained for two years at the Yarl’s Wood detention camp before being released, and who during that time underwent a catastrophic decline in mental and physical health, Mrs Justice Laing disagreed. A finding of unlawful detention was made and some very limited damages were awarded, covering only the final month of her detention.

Mrs Justice Laing begins the judgment with some arguably unsympathetic remarks:

The longer her detention went on, the more vulnerable she became. Her physical health has been significantly compromised, probably permanently. Her mental health also declined in detention. She eventually fell down a stairwell and broke her back. But she is a foreign national. She has no right to be here.

So… it hurt less? It does not really matter? She does not deserve our sympathy? Were I a foreign national, I think I would rather not have this judge decide my case. Despite this inauspicious start the judge does go on to find in the woman’s favour, finding that the Home Office ignored the copious medical and psychiatric evidence that was repeatedly presented. In the meantime, the woman had self-harmed repeatedly and become psychotic, and owing to side effects from her medication and complications, she was left unable even to urinate. She needed to use a catheter, which rather reduced the chances of her absconding if released.

At no point during the two years of immigration detention does there seem to have been any prospect of removing this woman. For the first year she was not cooperating with removal but we hear nothing of any progress at all by the Home Office during the final 12 months towards removing her. Like many others, she was seemingly “warehoused” until a court finally intervened.

Against this, the woman had 17 convictions for various offences, all minor, and had a very poor immigration history. However, her total sentences of imprisonment amounted to ten months, which was below the threshold for automatic deportation, and which was far less than the time she ultimately served in immigration detention. It might also be the case that the criminal offending and lack of cooperation with removal were linked to mental health issues, but this seems not to have been a concern for the Home Office, which vigorously and rather robustly resisted the unlawful detention claim:

Miss Anderson [for the Home Office] submitted that it was not for the Court to exercise what she described as a “superhero” jurisdiction by seeking to put right perceived injustices arising from immigration detention. Detention was bound to be distressing, and depressing, for detainees. Parliament had set no time limit on the exercise of the powers conferred by Schedule 3 to the 1971 Act, and if limits were to be implied, they must not undermine the central purpose of detention, which was to facilitate the removal of FNOs who not only had no right to be here, but whose presence in the United Kingdom is not conducive to the public good. As many such prisoners, the Claimant presented clear risk of absconding and of committing further offences. To the extent that she had not co-operated with attempts to obtain an ETD, she had prolonged her own detention.

To summarise, immigration detention is awful but that is inevitable, Parliament has ordained that detention can be indefinite and the court should stay out of it. But there is more. Miss Anderson also argued that the various medical reports were “medical advocacy” and the court should “not give them any weight, and the Secretary of State was not obliged to give them any weight”. She argued that the Secretary of State was entitled to prefer the reports of the nurses employed by the detention centre over evidence from qualified external doctors and consultants, and that the Secretary of State was entitled to ignore medical reports from doctors not employed by the detention centre unless nurses employed by the detention centre had issued what is called a Rule 35 report (the same type of report that was issued, for example, in the Alois Dvorzak case but ignored by the Home Office, leading to his death). In any case, she contended that detention reviews by the Home Office did not need to refer to external medical reports in order to be lawful.

These submissions were all rejected. It is worth pausing to consider what limits there might be on State power if Miss Anderson’s submissions had been accepted.

Last season it was:  Dvorzak - Slavonic Dance VIII Lizst - 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody Fouré -  Suite Pelleas and Melissande  (Prélude, Fileuse, Sicilienne, Mort de Melisande) And 7 pieces we play with a band.

This season it's going to be Beethoven - Symphony nr. 2 (As a homage to our last conductor that passed away) Resphigi - La Boutique fantasque Enescu - Romanian Rhapsody Nr. 1 Delius - On Hearing the First Cuckoo in spring

And one I am personally EXTREMELY exited about: Hans Zimmer's Gladiator.... Do you know how long it's been since I have played and score??!

This season is gonna be great! Especially since in March we'll have the Rock-opera together with that band we did the cd-recording with.