Mike Dailly, Govan Law Centre solicitor advocate, gave his reaction to SERCO’s announcement that they are to carry out lock change evictions of 300 families from their accommodation Glasgow. You can listen to his audio recording above.
Govan Law Centre statement on Serco’s press statement
Mike Dailly at Govan Law Centre said: “We believe it is extraordinarily unjust that Serco will carry out 300 lock-change evictions (30 per week, commencing from next week) relying upon a court judgment that is subject to live legal proceedings before Scotland’s supreme appellate court, the Inner House of the Court of Session. Our client has obtained the Opinion of Queen’s Counsel, who has identified a number of different and substantial grounds of appeal with “good prospects” and “a strong probability of success” in line with Scots, UK and European legal jurisprudence.
In these circumstances, we do not believe that Serco and the Home Office should proceed with hundreds of lock-change evictions in Glasgow until the appeal is dealt with. Serco act on behalf of the UK Government and ultimately this is the UK Home Secretary’s responsibility.
We have asked the Scottish Legal Aid Board to expedite matters, and hope that civil legal aid can be granted speedily given the overwhelming material that establishes probable cause and reasonableness before the Board, and the unquestionable significant Scottish public interest here. We hope to be able to ask that the court’s to expedite our client’s appeal in order to obviate the threat of hundreds of lock-change evictions in Glasgow pending our client’s appeal.
We believe this is the most sensible course of action, as the alternative would be the need for potentially hundreds of asylum seekers to instruct solicitors to seek interim interdicts at Glasgow Sheriff Court or the Court of Session to prevent lock-change evictions pending our client’s appeal, at a considerably greater cost and disruption than our proposed course of action.”
NOTES
Mike Dailly is solicitor advocate and the principal solicitor at Govan Law Centre.
Mike Dailly was and still is instructed to represent asylum seekers threatened with lock change eviction by SERCO.
Further media releases and details can be found at https://govanlawcentre.org/latest-press-releases
Serco statement here: https://www.serco.com/news/media-releases/2019/update-on-the-status-of-accommodation-being-provided-by-serco-to-former-asylum-seekers-in-glasgow
GLC Contacts
Mike Dailly: 0141 440 2503
Danny Phillips: 0771 771 5277
