Court of Appeal judge Stephen Irwin called the UK’s immigration rules “something of a disgrace,” in his speech on the complexity and obscurity in the law.

Speaking at the Professional Negligence Bar Association on 17 April, Judge Irwin used immigration law to illustrate how the complex drafting of laws can be made even more difficult by political objectives – especially populist political objectives.

“Regulations determining the rights of individuals in the immigration context may sometimes be necessarily complex, but we must ask whether they could not be drafted in a manner which makes them less obscure,” he said. Irwin’s full speech can be found here. 

This is not the first time the UK’s immigration rules have been criticised for being unnecessarily complex. Tribunal judges and experts at Free Movement (paywalled) have repeatedly challenged the obscurity of immigration law – which has become all the more worrying that provisions for legal support have been slashed in recent years.