Conservative catflap: the truth behind Maya and the deportation row
Spat between two Conservative cabinet ministers rests on a judge's light-hearted remark
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| Theresa May Home Secretary, winging it. bad hair dye day |
via @Guardian
An immigration judge's light-hearted remark about a cat no longer having to fear adapting to Bolivian mice lies behind the outlandish Conservative party conference claim by home secretary Theresa May. Her assertion that a Bolivian student was an illegal immigrant who could not be deported because he had a pet cat – called Maya – was one of three examples she cited as justifying her new drive to prevent human rights protection for family life blocking deportations.
The three examples were drawn from a Sunday Telegraph article in June which detailed 102 cases last year in which article 8 of the European convention on human rights – the right to family life – was cited as a reason for stopping the deportation of illegal migrants and foreign criminals. The other two cases involved a violent drug dealer, whose daughter lived in Britain, and a robber who was not deported because he had a British girlfriend. The paper was careful in its report to say the cat was only part of the reason that stopped the Bolivian student's deportation. May's downfall was caused by her failure to make such a qualification; she pinned the whole thing on the cat.
But the judgment delivered by senior immigration judge Gleeson on 10 December 2008 makes clear that while the cat featured in the case, it was actually a dispute about an article 8 rule then in force that said if someone was settled in Britain with an unmarried partner for more than two years without enforcement action, then they had an automatic right to stay.
Ronan Toal, the barrister in the case, told the Guardian that it wasn't even about a deportation but an application to stay in Britain and the cat had only been mentioned in passing as evidence of the long-term relationship.
"It's totally cynical. It's specious to rely on a completely distorted and inaccurate account of one decision of one tribunal. If that's the best they can do, then that just reveals the poverty of their thinking about human rights in general and article 8 in particular,'' he said.
The judgment makes clear that the joint ownership of the cat was not the crucial factor in allowing the appeal.
The original judgment does not name the cat. Indeed, it goes as far as to omit the cat's name, which led the Sun to print a picture of a cat with its eyes blacked out when it reported the story. It appears that Judge Gleeson's throw-away line at the end of his judgment "that the cat need no longer fear having to adapt to Bolivian mice" may have fuelled some of the tabloid myths that have stemmed from the case.
At a later appeal, when the cat was named as Maya, the Home Office argued that too much weight had been given at the earlier hearing on the impact on the student of having to return to Bolivia and leave behind not only his partner but also the jointly owned cat. May was relying on this last night to but even she conceded that the ruling was only "in part" based on the man's ownership of a cat called Maya.
No wonder Ken Clarke was prepared to offer Theresa May good money on Tuesday that nobody's deportation had been refused by the courts solely because they owned a pet cat.
The three examples were drawn from a Sunday Telegraph article in June which detailed 102 cases last year in which article 8 of the European convention on human rights – the right to family life – was cited as a reason for stopping the deportation of illegal migrants and foreign criminals. The other two cases involved a violent drug dealer, whose daughter lived in Britain, and a robber who was not deported because he had a British girlfriend. The paper was careful in its report to say the cat was only part of the reason that stopped the Bolivian student's deportation. May's downfall was caused by her failure to make such a qualification; she pinned the whole thing on the cat.
But the judgment delivered by senior immigration judge Gleeson on 10 December 2008 makes clear that while the cat featured in the case, it was actually a dispute about an article 8 rule then in force that said if someone was settled in Britain with an unmarried partner for more than two years without enforcement action, then they had an automatic right to stay.
Ronan Toal, the barrister in the case, told the Guardian that it wasn't even about a deportation but an application to stay in Britain and the cat had only been mentioned in passing as evidence of the long-term relationship.
"It's totally cynical. It's specious to rely on a completely distorted and inaccurate account of one decision of one tribunal. If that's the best they can do, then that just reveals the poverty of their thinking about human rights in general and article 8 in particular,'' he said.
The judgment makes clear that the joint ownership of the cat was not the crucial factor in allowing the appeal.
The original judgment does not name the cat. Indeed, it goes as far as to omit the cat's name, which led the Sun to print a picture of a cat with its eyes blacked out when it reported the story. It appears that Judge Gleeson's throw-away line at the end of his judgment "that the cat need no longer fear having to adapt to Bolivian mice" may have fuelled some of the tabloid myths that have stemmed from the case.
At a later appeal, when the cat was named as Maya, the Home Office argued that too much weight had been given at the earlier hearing on the impact on the student of having to return to Bolivia and leave behind not only his partner but also the jointly owned cat. May was relying on this last night to but even she conceded that the ruling was only "in part" based on the man's ownership of a cat called Maya.
No wonder Ken Clarke was prepared to offer Theresa May good money on Tuesday that nobody's deportation had been refused by the courts solely because they owned a pet cat.
