spiked93%
The law is preventing the UK from controlling its borders 37%
By Luke Gittos55%
7/16/2026, 5:55:47 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 21 faulty reasoning types, including Indoctrination, Appeal to Emotion, and False Dilemma, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 26.6% saturation with 114 hits. Analysis detected 711 faulty-reasoning hits from 428 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 43.5% and a BS Rank of 37% (13,889 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 63.50% of the article peer group.
The High Court has delivered a judgement ruling unlawful a key element of the UK-France ‘one in, one out’ asylum deal.
Under the deal, the UK can send certain people arriving illegally on small boats back to France.
In return, the UK has to accept an equivalent number of migrants who apply for asylum in the UK lawfully.
The legal challenge was brought by five small-boat asylum seekers – four from Eritrea and one from Sudan – selected for a return to France.
Their lawyers objected to several elements of the ‘one in, one out’ scheme as it affected their clients.
The court ruled all the elements lawful, bar one – namely home secretary Shabana Mahmood’s decision to remove a particular protection relating to human trafficking.
This 40 per cent figure hints at the major problem posed by this decision.
Many of the asylum seekers arriving on small boats may meet the definition of trafficking because of experiences they have had during their journeys to the UK.
The definition covers anyone who has been subject to a broad range of actions, including the ‘transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons’, using force, coercion or deception, for the purpose of exploitation.
Transportation by people smugglers does not, by itself, amount to trafficking: there must also be the necessary element of exploitation.
Such exploitation can include, for example, forced conscription into a foreign army.
It’s worth noting something else, too.
These people are not necessarily claiming to be at risk of exploitation if they are returned to France.
And they are not claiming to be victims of modern slavery in the UK either.
These cases turn on whether people have been victims at some point in the past.
The right to stay in Britain should surely not be a reward for surviving terrible things.
This decision shows why the national referral mechanism and the raft of international and domestic laws limiting the state’s ability to control our borders need urgent reform.
We cannot hope to have a secure border while such important decisions are being delegated to psychologists, lawyers and judges.
They are applying a framework which gives insufficient weight to the public interest in swift and effective removal of illegal arrivals.
A nation that cannot control its borders is barely a nation at all.
Luke Gittos is a spiked columnist and author.
His most recent book is Human Rights – Illusory Freedom: Why We Should Repeal the Human Rights Act, which is published by Zero Books.
Order it here.
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