The government is badly rattled on immigration. It knows that its perceived inability either to curb rampant asylum abuses or smartly deport those who ought not to be here amounts to an electoral threat.

Over this Bank Holiday weekend the Home Office announced yet another scheme to deal with the matter. Currently anyone refused asylum or faced with removal can appeal to a court, namely the Immigration and Asylum division of the First-tier Tribunal, and from there (with permission) to another court, the Upper Tribunal. Even the first appeal can take over a year; and since, with a few exceptions, a person cannot be removed while an appeal is pending, the expense to the public of accommodating them meanwhile is prodigious. The government’s proposed solution involves eventually transferring i

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