SAADI v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT
7
Paragraphs 8, 9 and 10 enable an immigration officer to remove those
refused leave to enter or illegal entrants and paragraph 16(2) (as substituted
by the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999: “the 1999 Act”) provides:
“If there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that a person is someone in respect
of whom directions may be given under any of paragraphs 8 to 10 ... that person may
be detained under the authority of an immigration officer pending – (a) a decision
whether or not to give such directions; (b) his removal in pursuance of such
directions.”
2. Temporary admission
20. Paragraph 21(1) of Schedule 2 to the 1971 Act enables an
immigration officer to grant temporary admission to the United Kingdom to
any person liable to be detained. Paragraph 21(2) (as amended by the 1999
Act) provides:
“So long as a person is at large in the United Kingdom by virtue of this paragraph,
he shall be subject to such restrictions as to residence, as to his employment or
occupation and as to reporting to the police or an immigration officer as may from
time to time be notified to him in writing by an immigration officer.”
Sub-paragraphs 2(A) to 2(E) give powers to the Secretary of State to
make regulations placing residence restrictions on persons granted
temporary admission.
21. Section 11 of the 1971 Act provides as follows:
“A person arriving in the United Kingdom by ship or aircraft shall for purposes of
this Act be deemed not to enter the United Kingdom unless and until he disembarks,
and on disembarkation at a port shall further be deemed not to enter the United
Kingdom so long as he remains in such area (if any) at the port as may be approved
for this purpose by an immigration officer; and a person who has not otherwise
entered the United Kingdom shall be deemed not to do so as long as he is detained, or
temporarily admitted or released while liable to detention ...”
In Szoma (FC) v. Secretary of State for the Department of Work and
Pensions [2005] UKHL 64, the House of Lords held that the purpose of
section 11 of the 1971 Act was to exclude a person temporarily admitted
from the rights available to those granted leave to enter, in particular the
right to seek an extension of leave to remain, but that an alien granted
temporary admission was nonetheless “lawfully present” in the United
Kingdom for the purposes of social security entitlement.
B. Pre-Oakington policy on detention and temporary admission
22. Before March 2000, when the opening of Oakington was announced
(see paragraph 23 below), the Home Office policy on the use of detention
was set out in a White Paper (policy paper) published in 1998 entitled
“Fairer, Faster and Firmer – A Modern Approach to Immigration and
Asylum” (Cm 4018) in these terms (paragraph 12.3):