UK Edition
A company owned by a lawyer who helped block the Government’s Rwanda deportation flight was given taxpayers’ money to train immigration advisers, The Telegraph can disclose.
More than £100,000 was awarded to HJT Training – a firm run by two barristers at the chambers which grounded a flight to the African country in June.
A Home Office source said Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, had instructed civil servants to undertake an “urgent review” of the contract, amid claims from Tory MPs the quango responsible for overseeing immigration advice could have been hijacked by activism.
HJT Training and the quango – the Office for the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC) – both denied there was any conflict of interest and they are not accused of any wrongdoing.
The OISC is an arm’s length body of the Home Office with responsibility for regulating those giving immigration advice and services across the UK. In December 2020 the Home Office awarded a contract worth £116,000 to HJT Training to provide the “competence assessment and moderation process” for immigration advisers on behalf of the body.
Two of HJT Training’s four directors – Mark Symes and David Jones – are barristers at Garden Court Chambers.
On June 14, the chambers secured injunctions at an emergency hearing before the Court of Appeal which prevented a plane from removing asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Mr Symes, who is listed on Companies House as having a “significant control” in HJT Training, was a member of the team.
Mr Jones did not act in the case. Garden Court Chambers said the asylum seekers they were representing all “had strong cases for asylum in the UK” and their stories demonstrated the “inhumanity in the Rwanda policy”.
The OISC said it was “satisfied” that the firm’s services “meet the required standards”.
A spokesman for HJT Training said: “OISC found no conflict of interest with our work.”