The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows that that is not the case, because what the Government have done is both to deem and to remove any capacity for the courts to consider the facts.
We can see how absurd even Government figures think this is. The Home Office’s legal guidance, published yesterday, quotes legal judgments. One says that
“the court should not shrink from applying the fiction created by the deeming provision”.
Another states:
“The statute says that you must imagine a certain state of affairs; it does not say that having done so, you must cause or permit your imagination to boggle when it comes to the inevitable corollaries”.
The mind does indeed boggle. The problem for the Home Secretary and the One Nation group is that, even as it stands, the Government are effectively admitting that they are creating legal fictions. They are saying that rather than following the facts, the courts will have to follow those fictions instead, for the sake of a tiny scheme that costs not just £300 million, but possibly £400 million. It also sets a precedent.