A Tier 4 student prohibited from working was accused of the Home Office of breach of his conditions of leave by taking part time employment. A decision was taken to remove him under the pre-Immigration Act 2014 version of section 10 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. he was served with removal directions and lodged an application for judicial review of that decision.

Sitting in the Upper Tribunal Blake J found that there was an alternative remedy in the form of an out of country appeal: see R (Mehmood and Ali) v SSHD [2015] EWCA Civ 744 (FM blog post: Court of Appeal dismisses ETS challenges).

This issue has not been raise day the Secretary of State until very late in the proceedings, however, and this was reflected in a “drastic” reduction in the costs awarded to the Secretary of State. The claim was reduced from £2,200 to £500. Blake J was critical of the solicitors for the applicant:

Mr Miah will have to pay his own costs of the application, but doubtless his advisers will have to consider whether a discount is appropriate by reason of their own apparent failure to grapple with the decided law and advise him appropriately.

Blake J also commented in the course of the decision that it would be helpful for skeleton arguments to be included in the main bundle because the tribunal administration did not always succeed in marrying up skeleton arguments with the papers.

Source: Miah, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (IJR) [2016] UKUT 23 (IAC) (18 November 2015)