Asylum seekers Prisoners In the UK, legislation was enacted that meant that late claimants for asylum could not access welfare while their applications were considered. They were also prevented by law from working, ‘paid or unpaid, or engaging in any business or profession’.120 The Commissioner for Social Housing in the ACT served a ‘no cause’ termination notice on a tenant in jail, and then sought orders to evict him from his home just prior to his expected release on parole. Eviction in these circumstances would have meant the tenant was facing losing his personal belongings with nowhere to store them, homelessness upon release, and the possibility of delaying parole due to not having somewhere stable to live. The ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal declined to terminate the tenancy and referred, among other considerations, to the ACT Human Rights Act in the exercise of its discretion. The Tribunal quoted the tenant: Three men whose asylum claims were rejected took their cases to the House of Lords in the case of R (Limbuela, Adam and Tesema) v Secretary of State for the Home Department.121 Due to their inability to either work or gain welfare support, they had been forced into rough sleeping and begging for food.122 The Court unanimously found a breach of the prohibition on inhuman and degrading treatment123 and used a provision which explicitly referenced the need to comply with the Human Rights Act in the relevant legislation to insist that they be provided with support.124 Discussing the types of treatment falling within this prohibition against inhuman treatment, the court found that, ‘where treatment humiliates or debases an individual showing a lack of respect for, or diminishing, his or her human dignity or arouses feelings of fear, anguish … it may be characterized as degrading and also fall within the prohibition’.125 By denying the asylum seekers state support, at the same time as effectively cutting off the ability to work, the UK government’s actions resulted in treatment that was severe enough to be considered ‘inhuman’ or ‘degrading’. My home is the most important thing to me. It’s important for my recovery and to enable me to get parole but more importantly because it’s the first place that I can call my own for very many years. It would be completely devastating to me to lose it now after so much I feel I have achieved while in prison. Shortly after the decision the tenant was released on parole back to his own home. Extracted from Human Rights for NSW Alliance submission to Free & Equal. Lady Hale noted in relation to this judgment that by requiring asylum seekers to be treated consistently with the Human Rights Act, ‘we are respecting, rather than challenging, the will of Parliament’.126 FREE AND EQUAL A Human Rights Act for Australia 2022 89