Home Secretary backtracks on decision that there will be no public inquiry into Manston

Wilson Solicitors Public Law and Human Rights team acts in a judicial review which seeks an inquiry into events at the Manston Short-Term Holding Facility in 2022 that complies with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The firm also acts for a number of individuals in claims for damages in relation to their unlawful detention and the conditions they experienced at Manston in 2022.

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Pre-action correspondence started 2 years ago in November 2022, in January 2023 the then Home Secretary conceded that an inquiry was required, and the judicial review was issued in the High Court in May 2023. Shortly after this, a separate claim was issued by Duncan Lewis Solicitors and the claims were linked.

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The High Court granted permission in December 2023 and an expedited 2-day full hearing was listed in March 2024. Shortly before this hearing, the then Home Secretary agreed to hold a statutory inquiry (under the Inquiries Act 2005) and was granted an 8-week stay to the claim so that steps could be taken to set up the inquiry.

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A statutory inquiry was not set up before the General Election was announced on 23 May 2024. Following the election of the new Labour government in July 2024, the new Home Secretary decided in September 2024 not to establish a statutory inquiry and to instead proceed with a form of non-statutory inquiry.

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The claimants’ core case is that the non-statutory inquiry proposed does not meet Article 3 requirements.  The inquiry will need to consider the actions of four former Home Secretaries, other senior ministers and civil servants, and the numerous private contractors operating at Manston. The claimants contend that the inquiry must provide funding for legal representation for victims (who include significant numbers of women and children); powers of compulsion in relation to witnesses and documents (so that the inquiry can access all the evidence it requires without undue delay); and public hearings (so that evidence can be effectively scrutinised and factual disputes fairly resolved). The September 2024 decision was made on the basis that the inquiry would not have any of these features.

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The claimants also challenged the September 2024 decision on public law grounds, for example that relevant information had not been taken into account by the Home Secretary, and for a breach of the public sector equality duty under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010.

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The judicial review was re-listed to be heard over 2 days on 20-21 November 2024. At the start of the hearing, the September 2024 decision to hold a non-statutory inquiry instead of a statutory inquiry was withdrawn on behalf of the Home Secretary. The hearing of the judicial review claim was adjourned pending the retaking of a new decision by 4 December 2024.

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2 years on from when Manston was emptied and pre-action correspondence requesting an Article 3-compliant inquiry, there remains no inquiry into the conditions and treatment to which detainees were subjected at Manston in 2022, to ensure that lessons are learned and not repeated. Manston continues to operate as a Short-Term Holding Facility and shortly after the events in 2022 the then government amended the Short-Term Holding Facility Rules in order to seek to legalise longer periods of detention than the 24 hours allowed for in 2022.

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The full hearing of the judicial review has been adjourned to 21-22 January 2025. Wilson Solicitors counsel team are Angus McCullough KC, Shu Shin Luh and Donnchadh Greene. The solicitor team is led by partner Jed Pennington and associate Katya Novakovic.

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