Even aside from the issue of an unpublished law purporting to have any effect, the Immigration Act 2014 (Commencement No. 3, Transitional and Saving Provisions) Order 2014 (SI 2014/2711) is a dog’s breakfast. At first blush it appears to bring into effect the new unified removal power at section 1 of the Immigration Act...
For the first time, it will now be possible for the immigration tribunal to make awards of costs in statutory appeals. The power is conferred by the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Rules 2014 (SI 2014/2604), specifically by rule 9. The new rules come into effect on 20 October...
Sweeping changes to appeal rights, a new non independent “administrative review” procedure and further changes to deportation appeal rights are taking effect on 20 October 2014, at least in some cases. This post will be updated as and when more concrete information becomes available because all we have at the...
As predicted, the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Rules 2014 are official and come into effect on 20 October 2014. More analysis to follow in due course for Free Movement Members. Headline changes seem to me to be that: Costs can be awarded in the First-tier Tribunal and therefore...
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...
Given my experience on the float list at Hatton Cross this week, this successful complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman makes very interesting reading. An award of £3,600 plus interest for legal costs and £100 for inconvenience was made to a lady whose hearing was cancelled the day before by...
The most devastating aspect of the Immigration Act 2014 (“2014 Act”) is the brutal scything of appeal rights. The Government has triumphantly declared that it has reduced the number of appeal rights from 17 (the number of immigration decisions in s.82 NIAA 2002 as it stands, plus s.83 & 83A...
At paragraph 4(b) of the newly laid Tribunal Procedure (Amendment No. 3) Rules 2014 is a reference to the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Rules 2014. These latter rules do not exist yet. As paragraph 4(b) of the amendment rules commences on 20 October 2014, can we therefore expect entirely new...
A fascinating study of power play and relationships inside and outside the hearing room has been published as a working paper by the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford: The culture of disbelief: an ethnographic approach to understanding an under-theorised concept in the UK asylum system by Jessica Anderson,...
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...
The Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008 are to be amended from 30 June 2014 to ensure that one party to proceedings gets notice before the other and indeed is responsible for serving the other party. Because the proceedings are immigration ones involving asylum seekers, the obvious bias in treatment...
There can be few immigration practitioners who do not presently encounter decisions in relation to applications made on the basis of peoples’ private and family life which do not carry the right of appeal. In recent years the prevailing tendency has become to segregate decisions, where the applicant is an...
The Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2014 came into force on 22 April 2014 with the effect that judicial review proceedings commenced on or after that day will not be funded unless: (a) the High Court or Upper Tribunal grants permission; or, (b) permission is neither granted...
This jumped out at me from the newspaper the other day: People who may find it difficult to give their best possible evidence in a courtroom environment and all child victims will be considered in the pilot areas. This allows them to give evidence and be cross-examined by both prosecution...
Ved and another (appealable decisions; permission applications; Basnet) [2014] UKUT 150 (IAC) is a new case from the Upper Tribunal on the vexed issue of immigration applications the Home Office considers to be invalid. The tribunal takes the view that a Home Office decision that an application is invalid cannot...
In a handy case that arrived just after I’d finished a Court of Appeal skeleton on the same subject, Mr Justice McCloskey has delivered another of his characteristically interesting determinations. This one is MM (unfairness; E & R) Sudan [2014] UKUT 105 (IAC), on the subject of procedural fairness amounting...
The Upper Tribunal has in a new judgment [R (on the application of Kumar & Anor) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (acknowledgement of service; Tribunal arrangements) (IJR) [2014] UKUT 104 (IAC)] now set out how it will deal with the vast majority of judicial reviews in which the...
There has now been a fairly substantial series of Court of Appeal judgments on the issue of costs orders in an immigration litigation context. These also have wider significance for other public law cases, but immigration law is currently dominating public law litigation, at least by volume, as this widely...
Routine, repeated delay in providing Acknowledgements of Service by the Home Office in judicial review cases reached such a pitch in 2013 that the court held a hearing into the matter (as previously covered on this blog). The Home Office blamed a rise in the number of claims, though from...
This determination was quietly released by the Judicial Office late last year. It is unusual for immigration cases to be publicised in this way. Presumably in this instance it was because of likely public interest in the final outcome rather than the procedural issues arising. It does seem to me,...
This is a very short survey to gather information for a possible legal challenge to the Home Office practice of withdrawing decisions late in the day and perhaps to the tribunal procedure rules, which provide for automatic termination of the appeal. We are very grateful for your time. Any responses...
An important recent case slipped under my radar last year, mainly because it has not been publicly reported on one of the publicly accessible case law repositories like BAILII. The case is R (on the application of Jasbir Singh) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EWHC 2873...
Following on from two recent posts on this subject (Judicial review in the Upper Tribunal; Do not lodge Upper Tribunal judicial reviews by post if urgent), there has been another warning about the transfer of judicial reviews into the Upper Tribunal. A claim that includes an element of unlawful detention must...
Following my previous post on Judicial review in the Upper Tribunal someone got in touch with a total horror story. She attempted to lodge a judicial review by fax to the Upper Tribunal. There was no initial response but on enquiry by telephone the next day she was invited to...
Since 17 October 2011, some immigration judicial reviews have been heard in the Upper Tribunal. Until now this was confined to asylum fresh claims and disputed age assessments. From 1 November 2013 most new immigration judicial reviews are heard in the Upper Tribunal. There are a few teething difficulties, though....
Two mundane, day to day things are getting my goat at the moment. The first is the mislabeled “cross examination” many Home Office Presenting Officers are trained into and allowed to get away with at court. The other is Presenting Officer failure to put points to witnesses that are then...
Both parties and practitioners are entitled to expect that the practice and procedure of the court in which their case is heard will be consistent and fair irrespective of which court it is and where it is. Yet a Freedom of Information Act 2000 request made by academics at the...
Short procedural point to this one and the use of some invisible magic hats: Where an application for permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal is made to the First-tier Tribunal outside the prescribed period, rule 24(4) of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (Procedure) Rules 2005 requires that the First-tier...
In R (Ignaoua) [2013] EWHC 2512, the Administrative Court held that under powers conferred by section 15 Justice and Security Act 2013 the Secretary of State can automatically and unilaterally terminate qualifying judicial review proceedings. The appeal hearing concerning this controversial ruling is imminent. The Claimant was a Tunisian national who...
On Wednesday 23rd October 2013, Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights heard oral evidence on the government’s latest proposals to cut legal aid. The evidence was clear. Those that will suffer the most from the proposals are society’s most vulnerable groups – children, care leavers, and victims of sexual abuse...
The new Immigration Bill proposes removal of rights of appeal to an independent judge, to be replaced with and replacement with ‘Administrative Review’ by one of its own staff. Immigration appeals have almost a 50% success rate according to the Government’s own figures: A recent Freedom of Information request I...
The new Immigration Bill (see Ronan’s previous post “Summary of clauses“) is so packed with nastiness that some really unpleasant parts of it – perhaps the whole of it – will make it to the statute book. No mainstream politician with influence will today stand up for the rights of...
