Immigration judges, illegal labour and tax.

The case of the Brazilian slapper and the immigration judge rumbles on as the Sunday heavies weigh in.

In the Observer, Mary Riddell just does not get it:

The issue is not what judges get up to with their cleaners. It is that many people with rightful cases may, in the future, be denied access to the justice handed down by Khan's colleagues.

I leave Riddell's tortuous logic to others.

In the Sunday Telegraph Alasdair Palmer gets closer but still no prize:

: ... his sex life is not what sunk Judge Khan: it was employing an illegal immigrant. Incredibly, neither he nor Judge J tried to find out whether their Brazilian cleaner was entitled to be here. Yet of course, as immigration judges, establishing whether someone has the right to be in Britain is something they do every day of their working lives.

The 'it 'neither journalist gets, nor even mentions, is tax, more precisely, income tax and National Insurance. The rest of us are liable to end up in jail for tax evasion if we knowingly employ individuals without providing the Inland Revenue with its cut, so I repeat my question from a week ago:

...it sounds like the judges did not need to know if she had a work permit because they were paying cash-in-hand and so avoiding tax and National Insurance. I wonder if the Inland Revenue is going to investigate possible criminal activity? Perhaps not.

Tags: Judiciary