Source: https://www.freemovement.org.uk/archive/cases/
Timestamp: 2017-10-22 19:41:40
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Cases Archives - Free Movement
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In a decision of 19 September 2017, Upper Tribunal Judge Ward dismissed a Dutch widow’s appeal against the refusal of her claim for state pension credit on the basis that she had no right to reside in the UK. Although a disappointing result for Mrs AMS, the case is a great starting point to remind ourselves of the meaning of “self-sufficiency” under EU law. It also reminds us that self-sufficient EU nationals may, in some circumstances, access welfare benefits. Background The claimant, a Netherlands national, is an 88-year-old widow. She was married to a British citizen who had served in the British armed forces and died in 1994. Her children…
The claimant in SSWP v NZ (ESA) [2017] UKUT 0360 (AAC) is a Polish national who worked in a chip shop. On 4 September 2017, the Upper Tribunal released a third interim decision in the case, relating to a very specific issue: had the UK derogated from Article 17 of Directive 2004/38 by the Accession (Immigration and Worker Registration) Regulations 2004? The claimant’s employment had been registered belatedly under the Worker Registration Scheme, with effect from December 2006. She continued working until March 2007, when she went on maternity leave. After that she had been unwell for a while and made unsuccessful attempts to return to work, but her employment was terminated in November 2007….
“Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear.” This was the introductory paragraph of Upper Tribunal Judge Wikeley in AF v SSWP (DLA) (No.2) [2017] UKUT 366 (AAC). When a judge expresses himself in this manner – and when the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions supports all three grounds of appeal against a decision that went his way – you know something has gone badly wrong. The conduct of the case by the First-tier Tribunal left a lot to be desired, putting it mildly. The case was a complex, hotly contested social security case worth £50,000, with 90 minutes of video evidence and over 1,000 pages in the bundle. The First-tier…
Three judges of the Upper Tribunal have examined 13 separate decisions of the same First-tier Tribunal judge and found them “wholly failing to meet the standards that are demanded by the office of a judge and expected by the parties”. The unreported judgment in AA069062014 & Ors. [2017] UKAITUR AA069062014 (30 August 2017) makes for profoundly uncomfortable reading. The panel, led by the Vice-President, said that “no more than the most basic principles of law are referred to in the decisions” of Judge Majid, “and even these seem to be quite often wrong”. There are many specific examples given. Three suffice to give a flavour of the whole. Each contains a quote from…
Former interpreters for UK armed forces in Afghanistan have lost their claim that the Afghn interpreter relocation scheme was unlawful on the basis it was less generous than the Iraqi equivalent. They succeeded on the basis that the public sector equality duty had not been properly complied with but this made no difference overall. Judgment: Hottak & Anor, R (On the Application Of) v The Secretary of State for Foreign And Commonwealth Affairs & Anor [2016] EWCA Civ 438 (09 May 2016)
Some three years after the radical rewriting of the Immigration Rules for families in 2012, the Supreme Court has granted permission to appeal in two important cases, SS (Congo) [2015] EWCA Civ 387 and Agyarko [2015] EWCA Civ 440. SS (Congo) is reported to be linked with the MM case on the minimum income requirement for spouses but I am not sure about Agyarko. Hearing for SS (Congo) to be combined with #MMcase on 22nd-24th Feb. All of a sudden,three days does not seem enough https://t.co/nufDrCFbMl — BritCits (@BritCits) December 3, 2015 Permission was refused in: Iqbal [2015] EWCA Civ 169 on the Tier 1 Entrepreneur rules Dumliauskas and Others [2015] EWCA Civ 145 on…
Useful summary of immigration case law developments in 2015 by Adam Pipe via Lexis Nexis PSL.
The Supreme Court has granted permission to appeal in the case of MP (Sri Lanka) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2014] EWCA Civ 829 and allocated reference number UKSC 2015/0027. Progress can be tracked on the Supreme Court website but the case does not yet appear there. It will be very interesting to see what the Supreme Court makes of the Sri Lankan country guidance. UPDATE: Alasdair McKenzie has kindly emailed to say that permission was granted “only on the question of whether Mr MP ought to have got HP in consequence of the accepted Article 3 case based on his mental health. The challenge to the CG was refused PTA.” –…
The case of R (on the application of Muwonge) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (consent orders: costs: guidance) (IJR) [2014] UKUT 514 (IAC) makes for interesting law and interesting reading. It is, apart from anything, the first case I can immediately recall featuring a Prologue, a section entitled The Plot and and an Epilogue and which opens and closes with quotation from Hamlet. More importantly for litigants in person and claimant lawyers, though, it should put an end to dodgy dealing by Treasury Solicitors when it comes to costs.
In Tarakhel v Switzerland [2014] ECHR 1185 (04 November 2014) the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”) has issued its long-awaited decision as to the lawfulness of returning asylum seekers to Italy, a subject that has engaged the refugee lawyers of Europe for some years. The ECtHR rules that individualised enquiries leading to individual assurances will be necessary in the case of child returnees including families with children.
Leave that has been extended by virtue of section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 is invalidated by section 10(8) of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 where a decision is made under section 10 to remove the person having such leave. BAILII.
Long-awaited guidance on returns to Mogadishu poses significant, but not insurmountable, challenges to Appellants It may be 286 pages long but the apparent effect of the new Somalia Country Guidance — MOJ & Ors (Return to Mogadishu) (CG) [2014] UKUT 442 (IAC) — can, from the Home Office’s perspective, be summed up in one phrase: a green light for returns to Mogadishu.
In the case of Jeunesse v. The Netherlands (Application no. 12738/10) the European Court of Human Rights has considered a refusal to allow a woman to settle in the Netherlands with her husband and three children. The case is particularly interesting because it is a Grand Chamber decision and because the court recognises that much of its case law on Article 8 and immigration issues involves the rather different scenario of expulsion of an already settled person as opposed to their admission. The court ultimately finds that there was a breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Those affected by the harsh requirements of Appendix FM and the…
In the case of YM (Uganda) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2014] EWCA Civ 1292 the Court of Appeal has examined the effect of the new Immigration Act 2014 human rights statutory considerations and the accompanying changes to the Immigration Rules. The court concludes that the new regime is irrelevant when considering whether an error of law was made but will be relevant where an appeal is being remade if an error of law is found. The case concerned a thirty year old man born in Uganda who had entered the UK aged six. He had committed some violent offences between the ages of 15 and 19 and then…
In the case of Nwaigwe (adjournment: fairness) [2014] UKUT 418 (IAC) the unnamed First-tier Tribunal judge had refused to adjourn a case. This was despite a letter from the appellant’s solicitors requesting a short adjournment on the grounds that the appellant was ill and stating that they had been unable to obtain evidence from the doctor or hospital “mainly to legal restraint under the Data Protection Act”. The appeal was dismissed but the appellant sought permission to appeal with a note saying that he had recently been diagnosed as diabetic and had been struggling with the medication.
In GP and others (South Korean citizenship) North Korea CG [2014] UKUT 391 (IAC) the tribunal concludes, to cut a long story short, that North Koreans can jolly well go back to South Korea whether they like it or not. Henceforth. Whereforeunto. Hereafter. Thereof.
Official headnote from Mohammed (Family Court proceedings-outcome) [2014] UKUT 419 (IAC): Whilst it may be that in the Family Court jurisdiction prior to the coming into force on 22 April 2014 of the Children and Families Act 2014 there was always the possibility of a parent making a fresh application relating to contact, there is nothing in the guidance given in RS (Immigration and Family Court) India [2012] UKUT 218 (IAC) (which was approved by the Court of Appeal in Mohan v Secretary of State for the Home Department[2012] EWCA Civ 1363) that supports the notion that the mere possibility of such an application being made (or pursued) is a…
Official headnote for MG (prison-Article 28(3) (a) of Citizens Directive) Portugal [2014] UKUT 00392 (IAC): (1) Article 28(3)(a) of Directive 2004/38/EC contains the requirement that for those who have resided in the host member state for the previous 10 years, an expulsion decision made against them must be based upon imperative grounds of public security. (2) There is a tension in the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Communities in Case C-400/12 Secretary of State v MG in respect of the meaning of the “enhanced protection” provision. (3) The judgment should be understood as meaning that a period of imprisonment during those 10 years does not necessarily…
In a fresh batch of cases from the reporting committee, two of those cases address the question of how grounds should be drafted, what constitutes an error of law and when permission should be granted. One of the cases concerns an appeal by a claimant and the other an appeal by the Home Office. There is an interesting difference between the cases. In the first, VHR (unmeritorious grounds) Jamaica [2014] UKUT 367 (IAC), the judge admonishes the lawyers for mounting challenges. In the other, Nixon (permission to appeal: grounds) [2014] UKUT 368 (IAC) the judge states that the tribunal will deal robustly with deficient grounds.
In July the High Court awarded an Indian lady, Radha Patel, £125,000 in damages for her treatment by immigration officials on and after arrival as a family visitor. The case is Radha Naran Patel v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2014] EWHC 501 (Admin) and it is extremely long judgment and has received mainstream press coverage, so I am not going to go over the full details here. As an interesting case I want to make sure I can easily find it in future, though, and that is as ever my main criterion for adding material to Free Movement. It is an interesting one as it involves stark findings…
The phased withdrawal of US forces has not led to a return to generalised sectarian conflict and indeed appears to have resulted in a significant annualised drop in the number of security incidents … the most likely development is that the levels of violence will either continue to reduce or remain at around the same level as in 2010, 2011 and the first 9 months of 2012.
The case of Ahmed and Another (PBS: admissible evidence) [2014] UKUT 365 (IAC) concerns the ‘genuineness’ test that was introduced for entrepreneur applications as the final death knell for the original concept of the Points Based System as a tool for objective decision making. On appeal, the tribunal holds that s.85A of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 prevents a judge from considering evidence that was not submitted with the original application to the Home Office because the genuineness test relates to the award of points under the Points Based System. This conclusion is itself questionable as the Home Office itself seems to consider that the genuineness part of the rules is ‘non…
Rather harsh but perhaps inevitable decision by Mr Justice Haddon Cave on a student left in the lurch when the start date for her course was changed at the last minute. International students really do get a raw deal from the rigidities of our increasingly absurd immigration system. The official headnote reads: The common law duty of fairness is essentially about procedural fairness. There is no absolute duty at common law to make decisions which are substantively “fair”. The Court will not interfere with decisions which are objected to as being substantively unfair, except the decision in question falls foul of the Wednesbury test i.e. that no reasonable decision-maker or public body…
The immigration tribunal reporting committee has been selecting some rather odd cases for reporting. It is a good job there aren’t any difficult legal issues in immigration and asylum law still out there on which judges, lawyers and litigants need guidance and that the tribunal is able to turn its collective mind to matters such as Budhathoki (reasons for decisions) [2014] UKUT 00341 (IAC):
The luggage carousel of the tribunal’s reporting committee has spewed forth a fresh batch of cases. Two of them concern deportation, one under domestic primary legislation and the other under European Union law. The facts are very different but the cases illustrate well the stark differences between domestic and EU law on deportation.
No commentary is really needed, I think. The powerful judgment by Lord Justice Moses finds the residence test ultra vires (beyond the powers granted by Parliament) and unlawfully discriminatory. The judgment includes some choice wording. What follows are the words of the judgment, but with some missed out. You can read the whole thing here: R (On the Application Of The Public Law Project) v The Secretary of State for Justice the Office of the Children’s Commissioner [2014] EWHC 2365 (Admin). I’ve omitted most of the usual ellipses for ease of reading.
In Detention Action v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2014] EWHC 2245, Ouseley J considered a challenge to the lawfulness of the policy and practice applied by the Secretary of State in the operation of the detained fast track and concluded that it ‘carries with it too high a risk of unfair determinations’ ([221]).
In the case of R (on the application of FI) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2014] EWHC 2287 (Admin) the court was asked to review a decision to refuse to register as a British citizen a 14-year-old who had been settled with Indefinite Leave to Enter the UK for 8 years and was coming up to his GCSEs.
In MF (Albania) v SSHD [2014] EWCA Civ 902, the Court of Appeal considered and upheld the criticisms of the appellant’s country expert made by the Upper Tribunal. In doing so, the Court appeared to disapprove of the practice of instructing expert witnesses to comment on particular findings made by decision-makers in reasons for refusal letters.
R (on the application of NS & others) v SSHD [2014] EWHC 1971 (Admin) The challenge was primarily to the presumption of “no recourse to public funds” which was inserted into the Immigration Rules at Appendix FM paragraph D-LTRPT 1.2 in December 2012. The argument applies equally to paragraph 276BE. The linked case of Akhalu was also dismissed.
Haleemudeen on remittal to UT: SoS conceded Edgehill applied, no need for deference to post-July 2012 and found disproportionate on Art 8 — Mansfield Chambers (@MansfieldImm) June 20, 2014 Free Movement write up and prediction here. And an update from Paul Richardson, Counsel for Mr Haleemudeen: