In one of the longest running bits of immigration litigation ever (not quite as long as the Cyprus Sovereign Base Area refugee cases…), the Afghan asylum seekers who arrived on a hijacked plane in 2000 have been granted general permission to appeal by the Upper Tribunal. The legal point is a short one. The First-tier Tribunal judge who granted permission to appeal did so in ambiguous terms and Alan Payne for the Home Office attempted to argue this was a limited grant of permission. Not so, says President Lane. From the headnote:

(1) It is essential for a judge who is granting permission to appeal only on limited grounds to say so, in terms, in the section of the standard form document that contains the decision, as opposed to the reasons for the decision.

(2) It is likely to be only in very exceptional circumstances that the Upper Tribunal will be persuaded to entertain a submission that a decision which, on its face, grants permission to appeal without express limitation is to be construed as anything other than a grant of permission on all of the grounds accompanying the application for permission, regardless of what might be said in the reasons for decision section of the document.

The case is Safi and others (permission to appeal decisions) [2018] UKUT 388 (IAC).