A Gazan family of six granted the right to settle in Britain under a scheme intended for Ukrainians.
A convicted rapist who avoided deportation to Afghanistan on the basis that the authorities there might take a ‘dim view’ of sex offenders.
A murderer blocked from deportation to his native Bangladesh because he claimed he was bisexual.
They might sound like a random selection of the increasingly bizarre legal cases to be heard in Britain under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
But they all have one thing in common: one of the judges sitting on each of the cases was Hugo Norton-Taylor.
It is six years since Norton-Taylor, then 46, was appointed a salaried judge in the Upper Tribunal, Immigration and Asylum chamber – the court to which failed asylum-seekers and other foreign nationals eager to remain in Britain can apply to have their cases reconsidered.
But, in that time, Norton-Taylor has acquired something of a reputation. In a judiciary that sometimes seems dominated by bleeding-heart liberals, he stands out as having an unusually large number of unfathomable rulings to his name.
It takes something for both Keir Starmer, himself a human rights lawyer, and our Left-wing Foreign Secretary David Lammy to be shocked by a decision made under the ECHR.
But that is what has happened in the case of a Gazan family who applied for asylum in the UK through the Ukrainian resettlement scheme.
The family – not unreasonably – lost their case in the Lower Tribunal on the grounds that they were not Ukrainian citizens and had no connection to the country.
Yet, in January this year, the decision was overturned by Norton-Taylor, who ruled that the earlier decision did not ‘strike a fair balance between the appellants’ interests and those of the public’.
Norton-Taylor was still trying to defend this ruling last week when he was involved in a public spat with Lammy.
The family, as it happens, have not yet made it to Britain because they are in Gaza and need permission from the Israeli government to leave.
Lammy has so far refused to grant the consular support from the UK, which would be needed to facilitate their journey to Britain – prompting Norton-Taylor to urge him to ‘think again’.
As the Foreign Office has pointed out with some alarm, Norton-Taylor’s decision may open the door for anyone living in a conflict zone anywhere in the world to apply for asylum in the UK. That could be millions of people.
Yet, unlike government ministers, the judiciary does not have to deal with the practical and financial consequences of its rulings.
Norton-Taylor happens to be the son of Richard Norton-Taylor, a former Guardian journalist who now writes for online publication DeclassifiedUK, often on Palestinian issues.
In one recent offering, Norton-Taylor Sr argued, somewhat hysterically, that the Government’s decision to proscribe the group Palestine Action after its activists broke into RAF Brize Norton and spray-painted two aircraft ‘threatens all our civil liberties’.
Perhaps he would like to name a single country in the world that would tolerate protesters breaking into its military bases and vandalising equipment.
I don’t know what the younger Norton-Taylor thinks about the Government’s decision to ban Palestine Action. But when it comes to his general liberal sympathies, he certainly appears to be a chip off the old block.
In the same month as his eccentric ruling granted asylum to the Palestinian family, it emerged that he had also handed Ramazan Morina, an Albanian who had twice been refused asylum, the right to remain in Britain on the grounds that it would be ‘harsh’ on his stepchildren.
Never mind enforcing migration law, nor acknowledging that Albania is a safe country, in Norton-Taylor’s hands our immigration system hinges on the feelings of children who aren’t even descended from the asylum seeker in question.
Even more outrageous, to my mind, was a ruling in 2022 to block the deportation of Afghan native Ibrahim Ahmadi, who had been granted asylum before being jailed for seven years for raping a woman in Glasgow.
Serious offenders are supposed to be removed from Britain on release from prison. But Norton-Taylor, sitting with another judge, Tom Wilding, ruled that Ahmadi couldn’t be sent home because it was ‘reasonably likely that the Taliban would take a dim view of an individual who had committed a violent sexual offence in a Western country’.
Given how the Taliban treat women, it is hard to see that they would be terribly bothered by what he had done, but yet again, thanks to judges such as Norton-Taylor, we have ended up with a migration system that rewards murderers and rapists for their crimes.
Ahmadi, by the way, was helped in his appeal by £1,330 worth of legal aid – paid for by you and me.
It was a similar story with ‘EH’, a Bangladeshi who had been jailed for a minimum of 12 years in 2008 for murdering his wife. The killer had claimed he was ‘bisexual’ – although the court accepted that he had lied about this to support his case.
On his release, EH should have been summarily deported, but this was blocked on the grounds of Article 3 of the ECHR which provides protection against degrading and inhumane treatment, such as the type he may have faced for his fictitious ‘bisexuality’.
The judge involved? You’ve guessed it: Norton-Taylor again.
Decisions such as these are surely a long way from what the bureaucrats who drafted the ECHR had in mind back in 1950.
But the problem with the convention – as its critics have rightly highlighted – is that its vague principles are open to wide interpretation. That gives judges huge leeway in their rulings – which certain liberal-minded officials are only too happy to take advantage of. And that’s only scratching the surface.
Let’s not forget Shaban Binaku, the Kosovan who illegally re-entered Britain after being convicted of theft, possessing a weapon and supplying class A drugs – but was granted permission to stay in 2020 on the grounds that deportation would be unfair on his children.
Or the Sudanese ‘16-year-old’ who was ruled more ‘likely than not’ to be telling the truth about his age when he applied for asylum – despite his receding hairline, beard and physical assessments suggesting he was closer to 25. Once again, rulings with Norton-Taylor’s fingerprints all over them.
He is not be the only judge making decisions that seem remarkably favourable to migrants. But it is astonishing how many times he is involved in overruling ‘harsher’ decisions made in the Lower Tribunal.
More concerning than these, however, is the ‘groupthink’ of other judges to try to prevent any criticism. In February – when both the Prime Minister and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch condemned the ruling to grant asylum to the Gazan family – Baroness Carr, Lady Chief Justice, complained about a ‘mounting campaign of attacks’ on judges.
In a democracy, it is vital that we have the right to hold those in power to account. When judges such as Norton-Taylor are effectively imposing a migration policy that is vastly at odds with public opinion and stated government policy, that matters.
For many of us, most of Norton-Taylor’s rulings stink. Hopelessly soft-touch judges like him are undermining public confidence in our appeals courts, perhaps irreparably.