ANDREW TETTENBORN: A large number of lawyers are overtly politicised

One of the deadliest weapons in a lawyer’s arsenal is understatement. Yesterday, on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Alex Chalk wielded it with skill.

The Justice Secretary was facing questions concerning the Government’s plan to house asylum seekers on the Bibby Stockholm barge.

‘In the last ten years,’ he said, ‘there’s been a growing, and I think regrettable, trend for lawyers to actively parade their politics and identify more with their clients.’

The BBC’s Nick Robinson, sounding more like a socialist student debater than an impartial journalist, asked him what he thought of Ashfield MP Lee Anderson’s suggestion that migrants who did not wish to stay on a barge should ‘f*** off back to France‘.

The Secretary of State kept his cool. In best courtroom style, he quietly suggested that it would be ‘much better in the main to keep their politics to themselves’, rather than lawyers zealously ‘parading their political opposition’.

He is right. And his remarks cut to the core of the country’s problem of illegal immigration.

Last month, in a brilliant undercover investigation, the Daily Mail exposed rogue lawyers encouraging migrants to make up false tales to boost their asylum claims, inventing cover stories and charging thousands of pounds to do so. The Solicitors Regulation Authority immediately shut down three of the offending firms.

No one has any sympathy for these dishonest lawyers. Even the BBC, having at first ignored the story, finally covered it on Today yesterday.

Happily, only a small minority of legal firms are dishonest in their dealings with the Home Office.

However, the greater problem is that a large number of lawyers have become overtly politicised and are intent on imposing their beliefs on the country at large. Ask anyone other than an asylum lawyer or a pro-migrant activist about the Government’s position and they will say that it is pretty reasonable.

The complainants, who came here illegally, are not being threatened with homelessness: they are simply being told they cannot pick and choose their accommodation.

Most people would agree there is something very odd about a person who chooses to cross the English Channel in a dinghy later claiming a fear of water should prevent them being put up in a floating hotel. These arguments, even if put forward in good faith, strike me as pretty desperate.

But this is not the way many of the legal profession see it, some of whom seem to revel in being the strikeforce for ultra-Left charities and NGOs such as Care4Calais.

The latter boasted just this week of helping to prevent the transfer of about 20 migrants on to the Bibby Stockholm, moored off Portland on the Dorset coast.

Similar legal tactics have been successful in preventing the relocation of asylum seekers to Rwanda, where it was hoped they could live while their applications were considered.

Just yesterday, The Law Society’s Deputy Vice President Richard Atkinson released a statement emphasising that a majority of lawyers do not oppose the rule of law. That the Society felt the need to say so proves quite how far down the rabbit hole of unreality we have tumbled.

Illegal immigration, running at unprecedented levels, is one of the most urgent problems facing the UK.

But the Government’s attempts to bring it under control are being stymied by lawyers who have found that flaunting their Left-wing credentials overlaps conveniently with their ability to make a fortune from legal aid and fees from charity funds.

There’s also something bitterly ironic about lawyers with London town houses and second homes in millionaire villages making a good deal of money from arguing that immigrants are entitled to better free accommodation than the Bibby Stockholm’s bed and board, with wifi and access to free medical care including dental treatment.

Understandably, ordinary people struggling with the cost of living will look on with disbelief at the privileges handed out to people who have arrived illegally by boat and demanded preferential treatment.

Many of these migrants are unfairly jumping the queue, elbowing their way ahead of those who have applied for asylum legally. On every level, this is an offence against the British sense of fair play.

And it has not come about because of a few ‘bad apple’ lawyers. It is endemic in our legal system, which was once the pride of the world and is now an international laughing stock.

Half a century ago, when I began my training, the most active political body among lawyers was the Inns of Court Conservative and Unionist Society. But as the universities marched steadily leftwards, so the legal profession began to lean that way too.

During the Thatcher and Major administrations, it became normal to see young lawyers who prided themselves on showing-off their liberal values. This reached a tipping point with the arrival of Tony Blair in No 10.

By introducing the Human Rights Act in 1998, New Labour established itself as the party of the lawyers. This accelerated the process of making ever-increasing numbers of ministerial decisions subject to judicial review, which transferred power from MPs to the bench.

Those lawyers, who were fresh-faced juniors in 1998, are now senior barristers, partners in solicitors’ firms and the stalwarts of the profession from which judges are drawn.

It never ceases to surprise me how openly Left-wing many lawyers are these days. They are scarcely aware of it themselves, so thoroughly are they steeped in its dogma.

One consequence is that, where once many lawyers naturally aspired to work in commercial law, their ambition now is to practise in the noble field of human rights.

Increasingly, as we have seen from Rwanda to boat migrants’ asylum claims, this cabal manages to manipulate the law to stymie and bog down attempts at managing immigration.

In turn, this feeds a vast network of organised crime gangs, who get rich by rounding up migrants to send in boats, lorries and shipping containers.

A possible immediate solution is to crack down on interim injunctions, the kind currently used by lawyers in Bibby Stockholm and Rwanda cases.

There is a strong case for saying that where an order is sought against an elected public authority, strong arguments should be shown before any judge halts official policy.

This will make it more difficult for organisations such as Care4Calais to write letters demanding government action and threatening an immediate interim injunction if their wishes are not met.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman is right to pledge that swingeing punishments will be imposed on corrupt lawyers. They deserve long jail sentences.

But the larger problem of a Left-leaning legal profession, identified so succinctly by Alex Chalk yesterday morning, is less easily resolved. It has taken generations to evolve — and if we are not careful, I fear it will plague us for generations to come.