How does the Human Rights Act 1998 help protect asylum seekers?
It provides an additional ground of protection, chiefly in relation to removals. Even if an asylum seeker does not qualify for refugee status (due to the relatively narrow grounds of persecution for a Convention reason), the Human Rights Act enables the courts to prohibit removal where an asylum seeker’s return to their home country would otherwise result in a ‘real risk’ of ill-treatment contrary to Article 3 (see the decision of the Strasbourg Court in Soering v United Kingdom) or a ‘flagrant breach’ of any other Convention right (see the 2004 House of Lords decision in Ullah v Special Adjudicator,[6] in which JUSTICE intervened).
