Blunkett forced to soften law on asylum claimants

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, has agreed to soften his policy of denying food and housing to asylum-seekers who delay their applications for refugee status after judges upheld a High Court decision against the Government.

Mr Blunkett had challenged the High Court's conclusion in six test cases that the rules breached the European Convention on Human Rights. Yesterday the Court of Appeal delivered a compromise judgment in favour of the asylum-seekers but allowing ministers to refuse free food and housing in some cases.

In each of the six cases, would-be refugees were refused state help while their claims were processed because they had failed to apply for asylum at the port of entry or as soon as reasonably practicable. Last month Mr Justice Collins said genuine asylum-seekers had had to choose between returning to their home countries where they feared persecution or facing a life of destitution in Britain.

Government lawyers said the court's "seriously flawed" decision had made the harsh rules, introduced in January, "unworkable".

In his lead judgment yesterday, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, sitting in London with two Lord Justices of Appeal, said the procedures were "intrinsically unfair". The judges added: "[The] system, as it has been operated to date, seems to us to have some curious and unsatisfactory features." But they said the court had been told by the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith QC, that the procedures were being "radically overhauled" and that when they have been put in order "we can see no reason why [the new regulations] should not operate effectively".

The judges said the Home Secretary could decline to support late claimants only if he had considered whether they could fend for themselves.

Mr Blunkett said: "This ruling upholds the view, passed by Parliament, that it's entirely reasonable to expect people fleeing from persecution to claim asylum as soon as reasonably practicable."

But Mark Littlewood, of the civil rights group Liberty, said the "devastating defeat" for Mr Blunkett meant his policy of denying asylum-seekers welfare or the right to work now lay "in tatters".