“Hotel staff had become part of the system supporting asylum seekers, but without experience or training that would enable them to identify if a service user's mental health was deteriorating. Migrants walk up the beach in Dungeness, on the south-east coast of England, after being picked up at sea by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution while attempting to cross the English Channel, in June. “She identified that there was an impact on the mental well-being of service users as a result of the combination of previous trauma, being accommodated long term in hotels, and the Covid-19 restrictions, although it was difficult to say whether this was more significant than the impact on the general population,” Mr Justice Johnson said. She noted the number of times - more than 70 - Adam had been in contact with Mears, the firm the Home Office uses in Scotland to deal with asylum seekers, and the charity Migrant Help, and that this “should have acted as a warning”. The court heard that a report following the attack by Heather Laing, the Head of Asylum Operations for UK Visas and Immigration, identified failings in the system of housing asylum seekers in hotels, and it revealed all of Scotland's 5,000 asylum seekers had been placed in Glasgow but there was a lack of accommodation. There is no legal obligation on the part of the defendant to initiate a public inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 or any other form of investigation.
“Such an investigation is being undertaken and is (as is required by the Convention) entirely independent of the defendant. “In any event, the appropriate mechanism of investigation in such a case (where a fatality has resulted) is a coroner's inquest, or, in Scotland, an investigation by the SFIU leading, potentially, to a Fatal Accidents Inquiry. “The claimant has not therefore demonstrated that the defendant is under a legal obligation to commission an independent investigation into the circumstances which resulted in Adam's attack. The claimant has not demonstrated that the defendant was arguably in breach of the obligation under section 6(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998. “There has been an adequate criminal investigation into that criminal offence. “The claimant suffered serious injuries as a result of the criminal violence of Adam, who was shot dead by police,” Mr Justice Johnson said. Number of asylum seekers in UK hotels triples in a year, report finds