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It seems to me therefore that political reasons would point strongly against amendment even if this were necessary. But I believe in fact it is at the very least strongly arguable that as a matter of law no amendment is necessary. My legal reasons are twofold:
1. When the Covenant was ratified, the United Kingdom Government entered an express reservation in the following terms:
"The Government of the United Kingdom reserve the right to continue to apply such immigration legislation governing entry into, stay in and departure from the United Kingdom as they may deem necessary from time to time and accordingly their acceptance of Article 12.4 and of the other provisions of the Covenant is subject to the provisions of any such legislation as regards persons not at the time having the right under the law of the United Kingdom to enter and remain therein. The United Kingdom reserves a similar right in regard to each of its dependent territories."
The procedures at Heathrow etc. are, as I understand it, all dependent upon this reservation. It seems to me in terms to be applicable to our legislation too, and to Closed Camps. I cannot agree that the unfortunate fact that we cannot deport to Vietnam makes the reservation not applicable, when it is accepted that the reservation would apply whilst arrangements for deportation were made if this was an option that was open to us.
2. Now for the second point: You have kindly drawn attention to the case in the European Court of Human Rights of X v. the United Kingdom, decided on 5th November 1981. Your legal argument is that the Court expressly ruled in paragraph 58 of its judgment that "habeus corpus" is not a sufficient remedy to meet the requirements of the European Convention; further, that the wording of that Convention and of the United Nations Convention are so similar that a similar result would be likely to follow in the latter case were the matter ever to be raised.
CONFIDENTIA
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