- BY Greg Ó Ceallaigh
Incompetence, neglect and failure to show due diligence
THANKS FOR READING
Older content is locked
A great deal of time and effort goes into producing the information on Free Movement, become a member of Free Movement to get unlimited access to all articles, and much, much more
TAKE FREE MOVEMENT FURTHER
By becoming a member of Free Movement, you not only support the hard-work that goes into maintaining the website, but get access to premium features;
- Single login for personal use
- FREE downloads of Free Movement ebooks
- Access to all Free Movement blog content
- Access to all our online training materials
- Access to our busy forums
- Downloadable CPD certificates
In the week before Christmas, at a time when national procrastination levels are at an annual high, the Home Office has had another warning about the need to get on with things when people are locked up. Hot on the heels of JS (Sudan) v SSHD [2013] EWCA Civ 1378 (Free Movement report here) the High Court again held detention unlawful in an automatic deportation case where the Home Office failed to make much of an effort to consider whether the detainee should be deported.
In R (Ismail) v SSHD [2013] EWHC 3921 (Admin), Mrs Justice Lang held 9 months of detention unlawful as a result of the defendant’s “incompetence, neglect and failure to show due diligence”. The Secretary of State had taken an incredible 18 months to make a decision on whether to deport a man who throughout that time had indefinite leave to remain. Even when a decision finally arrived, at the door of court, it was so inadequate that it got the nationality of the detainee’s children wrong.
The Court held that, even allowing for pressure of work, the decision should have been made as early as last February. If the Secretary of State had put half the resources into considering his case as went into fighting the judicial review it might have been earlier still.
The solicitor in the case was Waleed Sheikh at Leigh Day.
SHARE
