HMG in Badly Drafted Legislation Shock

[major_clanger]

Via the BBC:

"A married Canadian woman is due to fly out of Heathrow later under imminent threat of deportation from the UK. Rochelle Wallis is one of the first people to fall foul of the unintended consequences of rules brought in last year to stop forced marriages."

This is yet another example of this Government's prediction for trying to legislate away problems without carrying out a proper analysis of the wider consequences of new laws. It seems that even the Home Secretary is implicitly admitting that this case is far from the circumstances that the law was meant to apply to, but that it would be too embarrassing and awkward to start making exceptions.

I am tempted to volunteer my services to HMG to read draft legislation and suggest "what if X happened?" I assume such a position is vacant, because there seems little sign of this being actually done these days.

(Here, for instance, there is a blanket minimum age of 21, raised recently from 18. It seems - I can't find the enabling legislation anywhere, and it may just have been a policy change - that there's no appeal or exceptions process. Frankly, if this wasn't a legislative change it ought to be subject to judicial review, and if it was then I'm not sure it's HRA 1998 compliant. Of course, HMG would probably assert that since by definition the people affected aren't UK or EU citizens yet, the Human Rights Act doesn't apply to them. Bah.)

Comments

[rozk.livejournal.com]

I would suspect that someone has made a cold-blooded calculation that, by the time she could get a case through the European court, or possibly even through judicial review here, she will be old enough that she can get back in anyway. Also, having a high-profile case that involves a marriage that is not a forced marriage, and has no religio-racial complexities, enables the government to look even-handed, when the intention of the law is not.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

I regret you may well be right.

[the-gardener.livejournal.com]

I would suspect that someone has made a cold-blooded calculation that, by the time she could get a case through the European court, or possibly even through judicial review here, she will be old enough that she can get back in anyway.

The longer term result of taking such a case to the ECHR, however, is that it would formally declare the law incompatible with the European Convention. It might remain on the statute book (cf major_clanger's comment above), but would become for all practical purposes inoperable.