One of Sir Keir Starmer’s top allies defended judges as he slammed the Home Office for failing to properly challenge appeals from failed asylum seekers. Lord Hermer slapped down Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick for criticising judges’ decisions, sparking outrage.
But he also launched an attack at the Home Office over a number of bungled cases. The attorney general said: “It is utterly extraordinary that you can now have a Shadow Justice Minister who is openly calling out named judges, suggesting that they are not doing their best and that they are not delivering honest judgements. Prosecutors, all the kind of key institutions as part of our rule of law fabric, we all benefit from. I don’t think we can underestimate the threat that kind of language can have.”
But shadow national security minister Alicia Kearns said: “We should know the names of those who sit in judgment over others, and there should be public accountability for their decisions.
“We live in a democracy, we can disagree with judgments, there’s literally a process to appeal against unduly lenient sentences made by judges.”
And a Tory source said: “The attorney general is deluded if he believes that.”
Lord Hermer also criticised the Home Office for not building better cases to challenge appeals from failed asylum seekers and foreign criminals.
Speaking at a fringe meeting at the Labour conference, the attorney general said he was “shocked” to discover the Home Office often did not send representatives to tribunal hearings.
The attorney general also warned there were some cases where the Home Office did not put forward its own medical evidence to challenge claims made by migrants.
“That just strikes me as a system that we’ve inherited that wasn’t working as it should be working,” said the attorney general.
He maintained that he was “not a blocker” but an “enabler”.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has vowed to announce plans to overhaul human rights laws before Christmas that will curb migrants’ ability to block their deportation on the grounds that it would breach their ECHR rights to a family life or put them at risk of persecution.
