APPEAL judges threw out Michael Gove’s bid to restart fast-track detention of asylum-seekers yesterday.

The Justice Secretary was trying to overturn an earlier High Court ruling that the system — giving failed asylum-seekers only seven days to prepare an appeal to their deportation — was “structurally unfair.”

Master of the Rolls Lord Dyson declared that the fast-track rules (FTR) were “systematically unfair and unjust.”

They “do not strike the correct balance between speed and efficiency and fairness and justice,” he said.

“It is too heavily weighted in favour of the former and needs to be adjusted.”

The judge said that in his view “the time limits are so tight as to make it impossible for there to be a fair hearing of appeals in a significant number of cases.”

Detention Action, the campaign set up in 1993 to fight on behalf of individuals held in immigration centres, brought the original action.

Director Jerome Phelps said: “The detained fast-track is a fundamentally flawed process.

“The courts have repeatedly found that it is structurally unfair towards peo ple who are seeking protection in the UK.

“Despite repeated changes, it has continued to be unlawfully unfair. Asylum-seekers and the government have a common interest in a system that is both fast and fair.

“We hope that the government will work with civil society to find a different approach that does not sacrifice fairness on the altar of speed.”