The Secretary of State appealed against a finding that the claimant had been unlawfully detained pending his removal to Morocco.
Held: The approach taken in Hardial Singh requires both the SSHD and the courts to take a fact sensitive approach to the length of detention.
Lord Thomas CJ deprecated the use of ‘tariffs or yardsticks’: ‘The Secretary of State acting through his officials has to determine whether the period of detention is reasonable when deciding whether or not to continue the detention, subject to the right of any detainee to apply for bail. It is a judgment which has to be made on the evidence and in the circumstances as appear to the officials in each case.
There is no period of time which is considered long or short. There is no fixed period where particular factors may require special reasons to make continued detention reasonable.
McFarlane LJ said in R (JS) Sudan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EWCA Civ 1378 at 50 -51 that fixing a temporal yardstick might cause the courts to accept periods of detention that could not be justified on the facts of a particular cases. In R (NAB) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] EWHC 3137 (Admin) Irwin J made clear at paras 77-80 that a tariff would be repugnant and wrong . .
Each deprivation of liberty pending deportation requires proper scrutiny of all the facts by the Secretary of State in accordance with the Hardial Singh principles. Those principles are the sole guidelines.’
John Thomas LCJ, Black, Underhill LJJ
[2015] EWCA Civ 931
Bailii
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Nouazli, Regina (on The Application of) v Secretary of State for The Home Department SC 20-Apr-2016
The court considered the compatibility with EU law of regulations 21 and 24 of the 2006 Regulations, and the legality at common law of the appellant’s administrative detention from 3 April until 6 June 2012 and of bail restrictions thereafter until . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Torts – other
Updated: 03 January 2022; Ref: scu.551703