The applicant had been convicted of incest with his daughter, and served with a deportation notice on release from prison.
Held: Removal on ‘public policy’ grounds may be a justified response to sufficiently serious criminal conduct, if combined with evidence of a propensity to reoffend, and in particularly serious cases even without it. It was open to the Secretary of State to decide that certain offences were so serious, in the sense of being sufficiently repugnant to the generally accepted standards of morality that the continued presence of the individual in the community was unacceptable, irrespective of a propensity to commit further offences, that there was a proper public interest served by the deportation.
Stuart-Smith LJ contrasted the exercise of judicial and executive discretions: ‘In my judgment, it is open to the Secretary of State to decide that some offences are so serious, in the sense that they are sufficiently repugnant to the generally accepted standards of morality, that the continued presence in the community is unacceptable, irrespective of a propensity to commit further offences of a similar character. If that is so, the only question that arises is whether a decision of the Secretary of State and the Immigration Appeal Tribunal can be attacked on the grounds of Wednesbury unreasonableness.’
Judges:
Stuart-Smith LJ
Citations:
[1996] Imm AR 250
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – B v Secretary of State for Home Department CA 18-May-2000
The claimant had come to England as a child from Italy. As an adult, he was convicted of a sexual assault against his daughter, and after release from his prison sentence of five years, he now appealed against a deportation order, saying that the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Immigration
Updated: 27 October 2022; Ref: scu.424098