by Peter Simpson, TCW
SO THE Court of Appeal has decreed that hotels for migrants must remain open in order to protect the rights of asylum seekers, thus overturning the recent High Court ruling in favour of Epping Forest District Council that the use of the Bell Hotel in Epping for migrant accommodation was contrary to planning regulations. This looks very much like the law of the land asserting that the rights of asylum seekers must trump all other considerations.
One of the primary problems which we are facing here is the assumption by the legal system that by the mere act of claiming asylum, someone must automatically have formal asylum status conferred upon him, and become the immediate recipient of considerable privileges and a protected status. This is regardless of whether the claim for asylum is legitimate. Yes, the claim may fail, but the assumption is that it is always worthy of a costly and lengthy legal process, and that the British Government is morally obliged to provide for the claimant’s subsistence while the law takes its course. This assumption is devoid of ethical foundation. It rewards the premeditated and unquestionably wrong act of illegal entry into the UK.
As a Christian minister I have a clear Biblical mandate to argue that a nation’s laws and practices must reflect true justice as defined by the laws of God in Scripture. From a Christian perspective, it is plainly unethical, and indeed sinful in God’s sight, to enter a country which is not one’s own without formal permission to do so. If one is considering this issue by means of the Holy Spirit-led conscience of the Christian, as opposed to through the lens of virtue-signalling cultural Marxism, to receive taxpayer-funded food and accommodation when one is not entitled to be in the country in the first place brings us into the realm of the obligations of the Eighth Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not steal’, and the need not to take to oneself that to which one has no entitlement (in God’s sight).