In Anwar, as I have said, the Supreme Court approved of that and in doing so again referred to the travaux préparatoires and the way in which those words came into the convention. They were put in at the last minute to appease the French representative because they were concerned about refugees claiming asylum in France who could have applied elsewhere. In 2001, an expert round-table conference was held in Geneva by different countries and disciplines which again upheld the interpretation of a short-term stopover not affecting coming directly from territories where there was persecution.
In a previous debate on this subject on Clause 11, the Minister relied on a provision in Section 31(3) of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 which had very similar wording to what we find in Section 36. What she did not say, and which comes out of the very detailed speeches of Lord Bingham and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, is that when those provisions in Section 31 of the 1999 Act were being debated, the Attorney-General specifically said, in light of the view of the UNHCR, that there was flexibility in the concept of arriving directly. So, far from that Act being a precedent for a strict interpretation of those words, his elaboration meant that there was, in fact, a correspondence
with the meaning arrived at in the courts of this country in Adimi. For those reasons, I say that the definition of arriving directly in Clause 36 is incorrect. It does not meet the international standards of the UNHCR and is contrary to the convention.