The High Court’s ‘right to rent’ decision is a travesty

The political campaign against the UK’s immigration laws secured an important victory yesterday, with the High Court denouncing sections 20-37 of the Immigration Act 2014 as racially discriminatory – not by discriminatory intent or design but “indirectly”, by side effect. Those “right to rent” provisions make it unlawful for private landlords to rent property to persons unlawfully in the UK and so require landlords to check the immigration status of prospective tenants. Introduced on a trial basis in the West Midlands, the scheme was extended across England from February 2016. The Government’s intent has been to exercise its powers in the 2014 Act to extend the scheme across the entire UK.

The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, with support from the Residential Landlords Association and Liberty, persuaded the High Court that the legislation discriminates on the basis of race and nationality. The Court exercised its powers under the Human Rights Act 1998 to declare the legislation incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).