SAADI v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT 5 pre-determined timetable. Would applicants voluntarily submit to such a regime, if not detained? Many no doubt would, but it is impossible to condemn as irrational the policy of subjecting those asylum seekers whose applications appear susceptible to rapid resolution to a short period of detention designed to ensure that the regime operates without dislocation. This is not a conclusion that we have reached easily. Asylum seekers are detained at Oakington only if it seems likely that their applications can be resolved within a week. But they must also be persons who are not expected to attempt to abscond or otherwise misbehave. At first blush it seems extreme to detain those who are unlikely to run away simply to make it easier to process their claims. But the statistics that we have set out at the start of our judgment cannot be ignored. As [the Home Office minister] observed in debate in the House of Lords on 2 November 1999, faced with applications for asylum at the rate of nearly 7,000 per month, 'no responsible government can simply shrug their shoulders and do nothing' ... . A short period of detention is not an unreasonable price to pay in order to ensure the speedy resolution of the claims of a substantial proportion of this influx. In the circumstances such detention can properly be described as a measure of last resort. ...” The Court of Appeal next considered whether the detention fell within the first limb of Article 5 § 1(f), and held that the right to liberty in Article 5 § 1(f) was intended to preserve the sovereign power of Member States to decide whether to allow aliens to enter their territories on any terms whatsoever and that detention of an alien would be covered by the subparagraph unless and until entry was authorised, subject to the proviso, derived from Chahal v. the United Kingdom (judgment of 15 November 1996, Reports 1996-V) that the asylum or deportation procedure should not be prolonged unreasonably. 18. On 31 October 2002 the House of Lords unanimously dismissed the applicant's appeal ([2002] UKHL 41). Having taken note of evidence that the applications of approximately 13,000 asylum seekers a year were processed at Oakington, which entailed scheduling up to 150 interviews a day, Lord Slynn of Hadley, with whom the other Law Lords agreed, held as follows: “In international law the principle has long been established that sovereign states can regulate the entry of aliens into their territory. ... This principle still applies subject to any treaty obligation of a state or rule of the state's domestic law which may apply to the exercise of that control. The starting point is thus in my view that the United Kingdom has the right to control the entry and continued presence of aliens in its territory. Article 5 § 1(f) seems to be based on that assumption. The question is therefore whether the provisions of para. 1(f) so control the exercise of that right that detention for the reasons and in the manner provided for in relation to Oakington is in contravention of the Article so as to make the detention unlawful. In my view it is clear that detention to achieve a quick process of decision-making for asylum seekers is not of itself necessarily and in all cases unlawful. What is said however is that detention to achieve speedy process 'for administrative convenience' is not within para. 1(f). There must be some other factor which justifies the exercise of