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Home secretary courts controversy with judges by claiming illegal immigrant was protected by act due to being a cat owner The home secretary, Theresa May, walked straight into a clash with senior judges on Tuesday after claiming that the Human Rights Act was responsible for blocking the deportation of an illegal immigrant because he had a pet cat. May promised the Tory party conference that she was not making the story up, but the judicial communications office, which represents senior judges, insisted the story was not true, and had told May’s department as much. “This was a case in which the Home Office conceded that they had mistakenly failed to apply their own policy – applying at that time to that appellant – for dealing with unmarried partners of people settled in the UK,” said a judicial communications office statement issued at the time of the case. “That was the basis for the decision to uphold the original tribunal decision – the cat had nothing to do with the decision,” said a spokeswoman. The case of the pet cat was one of several alleged cases that the home secretary used to illustrate her claim that the Human Rights Act should go and to justify her intention to clarify the immigration rules to ensure that a right to family life is not used to block immigration deportations. The home secretary later said she accepted the judges’ correction but argued that she wasn’t relying on that single case to justify her policy. May also introduced Colonel Tim Collins, the decorated Iraq war veteran, as the first declared Conservative candidate to run next November as a police and crime commissioner. Collins set the tone for his campaign by declaring that he wanted the police to be “ratcatchers and not social workers”, by claiming that they currently gave undue preference to political correctness and that he wanted to see ex-business and ex-military figures stand as PCC candidates not “sunset councillors or retired policemen with axes to grind”. May endorsed Collins’s robust approach, telling delegates: “I wouldn’t want to be a criminal if he gets elected.” The home secretary renewed her commitment to reforming the police and insisted government cuts did not mean that frontline policing could not be maintained and improved. But it was on immigration that the home secretary came unstuck. She repeated her pledge to reduce net migration to the “sustainable levels of tens of thousands” then she moved on to her announcement: “We need to make sure that we’re not constrained from removing foreign nationals who, in all sanity, should have no right to be here,” she said. “We all know the stories about the Human Rights Act. The violent drug dealer who cannot be sent home because his daughter – for whom he pays no maintenance – lives here. The robber who cannot be removed because he has a girlfriend. The illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because – and I am not making this up – he had a pet cat.” She said that was why she was announcing the change in the immigration rules to “ensure that the misinterpretation of article eight of the European Convention on Human Rights – the right to family life – no longer prevents the deportation of people who shouldn’t be here”. The home secretary read out the actual wording of article 8.2, which says the right to family life should be not be interfered with except where it is “necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of rights and freedom of others”. She said that this showed that the right to family life should not be used to drive a coach and horse through the immigration system by blocking deportations. But this definition, which has been used by judges to determine deportation appeals since Ted Heath’s 1971 Immigration Act, would appear to cover all the cases of convicted foreign criminals and illegal migrant families living on benefits that the home secretary has complained about. Home Office sources say there are about 100 successful appeals on article 8 grounds every year, mostly involving illegal migrants. Theresa May Human Rights Act Judiciary Conservative conference 2011 Conservative conference Conservatives Human rights Immigration and asylum Animals Alan Travis guardian.co.uk