The claimant challenged the legality of the Fast Track Rules 2014 which govern appeals to the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) against refusals by the Secretary of State for the Home Department (‘SSHD’) of asylum applications.
Held: The Court upheld the quashing of ‘Fast Track Rules’ which required asylum seekers, detained by the Home Secretary at specified locations, to present any appeal against the refusal of asylum within seven days of the refusal. Lord Dyson MR referred to ‘the principle that only the highest standards of fairness will suffice in the context of asylum appeals’. He explained that the timetable for the conduct of the appeals was so tight that a significant number of appellants would be denied a fair opportunity to present them. In those circumstances the court had no need to address a further argument that it had been in breach of natural justice for the Home Secretary, as the respondent to any appeal, to have been able, by detaining the asylum seeker at a specified location, to cause him to be placed into the fast track. He suggested, however, that, had the rules for the fast track been fair, it would have been irrelevant that it was the Home Secretary who had caused them to be engaged.
‘ . . (i) in considering whether a system is fair, one must look at the full run of cases that go through the system; (ii) a successful challenge to a system on grounds of unfairness must show more than the possibility of aberrant decisions and unfairness in individual cases; (iii) a system will only be unlawful on grounds of unfairness if the unfairness is inherent in the system itself; (iv) the threshold of showing unfairness is a high one; (v) the core question is whether the system has the capacity to react appropriately to ensure fairness (in particular where the challenges directed to the tightness of time limits, whether there is sufficient flexibility in the system to avoid unfairness); (vi) whether the irreducible minimum of fairness is respected by the system and therefore lawful is ultimately a matter for the courts.’
Lord Dyson MT, Briggs, Beam LJJ
[2015] EWCA Civ 840, [2015] WLR(D) 352, [2016] 3 All ER 626, [2015] Imm AR 1349, [2016] INLR 79, [2015] 1 WLR 5341, [2016] INLR 79
Bailii, WLRD
England and Wales
Citing:
Appeal from – Detention Action v First-Tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) and Others Admn 12-Jun-2015
. .
Cited by:
Cited – Kiarie and Byndloss, Regina (on The Applications of) v Secretary of State for The Home Department SC 14-Jun-2017
The court considered a challenge to the rules governing ‘out of country’ appeals against immigration decisions. They had in each case convictions leading to prison terms for serious drugs related offences.
Held: The appeals were allowed, and . .
Cited – Austin, Regina (on The Application of) v Parole Board for England and Wales Admn 17-Jan-2022
Parole Board Publication Scheme Unduly Complicated
This claim for judicial review raises important issues about the lawfulness of the Parole Board’s policy and practice in relation to the provision of a summary of a Parole Board decision to victims and victims’ families and the media. The protocol . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Immigration
Updated: 19 January 2022; Ref: scu.550820