Author Archive

The Youth Mobility Scheme is one of the friendlier parts of the Immigration Rules. The route is designed to enable people aged 18-30 to live and work in the UK and is relatively straightforward to apply for, at least compared with other options for ec ...

The Upper Tribunal has decided that it has the power to transfer damages claims resulting from judicial review proceedings to the County Court. The tribunal held that its incidental powers mirror those enjoyed by the High Court, which routinely transf ...

Secretary of State for the Home Department v P3 [2021] EWCA Civ 1642 is about how much SIAC should defer to the Home Secretary’s view about national security concerns. The answer is quite a lot, but not too much. The background to this case is t ...

The decision in R (KTT) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 2722 (Admin), widely reported in the mainstream press this week, is a massive result for trafficking victims. The High Court has concluded that a trafficking victim who i ...

There has been another successful challenge to the policy on asylum seekers undertaking paid work. In R (Cardona) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 2656 (Admin), the High Court has declared that Home Office policy on this issue ...

At the outset of the pandemic, on 23 March 2021, Upper Tribunal President Lane issued guidance for making deciding immigration appeals “on the papers”, without an oral hearing. As all immigration practitioners know, oral hearings are essen ...

In Chowdhury v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 1220, the Court of Appeal has confirmed that where an extended family member applies for an EEA residency card, their period of dependency on their EEA citizen sponsor must have ...

ZV (Lithuania) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 1196 is an important case about the admissibility of asylum claims made by EU citizens. There is a long-standing rule that asylum claims by EU nationals will only be considere ...

The Supreme Court has upheld the policy of treating asylum seekers who claim to be children as adults if two Home Office officials think that the person looks significantly over 18. The case is R (BF (Eritrea)) v Secretary of State for the Home Depar ...

The Court of Appeal has rebuked the Upper Tribunal for reversing an immigration judge’s decision without identifying an error of law. The Upper Tribunal’s jurisdiction to allow an appeal from the First-tier Tribunal depends on having first ide ...

The High Court has declared that an anomaly in the benefits system which disadvantages victims of trafficking who receive asylum support is discriminatory and in breach of Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Unusually, the Secretary ...

The Court of Appeal’s Criminal Division has concluded that Home Office trafficking decisions are not admissible in criminal proceedings. Brecani v R [2021] EWCA Crim 731 concerned a 17-year-old convicted of taking part in a conspiracy to supply ...

In KM v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 693, the Court of Appeal concluded that someone with an otherwise “strong” case for remaining in the UK based on their private life might not have a “particularly str ...

The judgment of the Court of Appeal in MR (Pakistan) v Secretary of State for Justice & Others [2021] EWCA Civ 541 marks a major step forward in the battle over the use of immigration detention in prisons. The court has decided that the absence of ...

The Home Secretary has laid a new draft of the Adults at Risk statutory guidance before Parliament. The new version marks a significant change in how trafficking victims fit within the policy framework for detaining vulnerable people. At present, the ...

In Secretary of State for the Home Department v Starkey [2021] EWCA Civ 421 the Court of Appeal provides a helpful reminder of the need for very clear language when explaining how evidence has been examined and assessed. The immigration tribunal’ ...

The European Court of Human Rights has looked for the first time at when the prosecution of a human trafficking victim might violate Article 4 of the Convention. In VCL and AN v United Kingdom (application nos. 77587/12 and 74603/12), it sharply criti ...

In R (Mozumder) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 138, the Court of Appeal has dealt with an unusual costs issue arising from the furore over alleged cheating in English language tests.  The issue was how costs should be ap ...

In an interim relief decision the High Court has ordered the release of an immigration detainee within 48 hours, indicating that judges will not allow the Home Office to use the pandemic as cover to justify long “grace period” delays in re ...

Ndwanyi (Permission to appeal; challenging decision on timeliness) Rwanda [2020] UKUT 378 (IAC) is about how a respondent can challenge a decision that an application for permission to appeal is in time, when in fact it is not in time. In this case th ...

Lowe v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 62 is about the role of the Upper Tribunal in deportation appeals. The role of an appellate court when reviewing the findings of fact made by the court below sounds straightforward: it ...

The European Court of Human Rights has confirmed that the final offence committed by someone before deportation action is taken against them does not need to be particularly significant if they have a history of serious offending. In Munir Johanna v D ...

The High Court has ordered the release on bail of a detainee who is subject to deportation action but suffers from serious mental health problems. Full judgments at the interim relief stage are relatively unusual so R (RS) v Secretary of State for the ...

In BTT v R [2021] EWCA Crim 4 the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) required a man appealing a conviction for growing cannabis to give oral evidence about his account of human trafficking. It then relied on this evidence to depart from the Upper Tri ...

Lawyers are prone to creating “terms of art”, i.e. a phrase which has a specific meaning within a particular branch of law, distinct from its usage in ordinary English. In Patel (historic injustice; NIAA Part 5A) India [2020] UKUT 351 (IAC ...

In R (MP) v Secretary of State for Health And Social Care [2020] EWCA Civ 1634, the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s decision that there was no need for the government to consult the public before introducing advance charging of overseas ...

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, has today released a new report auditing the Home Office’s procedure for deciding statelessness applications. The audit finds that there is considerable room for improvement in how the UK processes applicati ...

Everyone who works with asylum seekers knows that the Home Office system for providing accommodation is not fit for purpose. In R (DMA and Others) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWHC 3416 (Admin) the High Court has finally and emp ...

In April 2020, the Civil Procedure Rules were updated with significant changes made to the rules about witness statements filed by non-English speakers. The new rules are of obvious interest to immigration lawyers and Diamond v Secretary of State for ...

The Upper Tribunal has handed down a new country guidance decision on draft evaders from Ukraine, PK and OS (basic rules of human conduct) Ukraine CG [2020] UKUT 314 (IAC). The judgment contains important guidance on the relationship between the Refug ...

The UK government’s policy is that Brexit will not affect Irish nationals at all. Other EU citizens have to apply for a new “settled status” or risk losing their right to live and work in the UK after June 2021. But the government’s position i ...

In R v A [2020] EWCA Crim 1408, the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) has confirmed that the creative use of the abuse of process jurisdiction to protect trafficking victims from prosecution is no longer necessary in light of the Modern Slavery Act ...

The Immigration Act 2020 has arrived. The new legislation — the full title of which is the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Act 2020 — passed into law today, 11 November 2020. The Act is much shorter than any o ...

The Court of Appeal has rejected an attempt by the Home Office to overturn a High Court order to bring an asylum seeker who had been removed under the unlawful Detained Fast Track system back to the UK. The case is R (PN (Uganda)) v Secretary of State ...

KAM (Nuba – return) Sudan CG [2020] UKUT 269 (IAC) is the first country guidance decision about the risk to the Nuba people on return to Sudan. The Upper Tribunal’s main finding is that there is no general risk to Nuba in either their home ...

The High Court has refused a challenge to the conditions at Brook House Immigration Removal Centre in 2017 on all grounds. This is despite the Home Office having made a number of changes to the regime provided by G4S since then in response to criticis ...

In R (Akram) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 1072, the Court of Appeal has confirmed the high bar for reopening old judgments. The appellant tried to reopen an old judicial review in which he had challenged the refusal of ...

In Johnson v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 1032, the Court of Appeal has determined that there is no breach of the General Data Protection Regulation involved in hearing human rights appeals from abroad via video link. Mr ...

After the Hardial Singh principles, the Adults at Risk policy is the most important source of law for securing the release of people from immigration detention. It provides a detailed framework for assessing the vulnerability of detainees and balancin ...

Data about the operation of Rule 35 of the Detention Centre Rules brought into the public domain by a Freedom of Information request lays bare the inadequacies of the current system for reporting vulnerabilities among immigration detainees. The data, ...