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In SA v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 357, the Court of Appeal had held that when considering the revocation of either refugee or humanitarian protection status courts and tribunals may only consider whether the UK’s international protection law obligations have been breached with reference to the facts claimed by the appellant in the original application which led to their grant of status.
In this case, the Secretary of State had revoked the appellant’s refugee status on the basis that she had misled the Home Office as to her nationality and the risks she relied on as bringing her within the protective regime of the Refugee Convention. In considering SA’s appeal under s.84(3) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, the FtT held that SA had lied to the Home Office and that she was not a refugee within the meaning of the Convention. However, the FtT proceeded to assess whether SA would be eligible for humanitarian protection status under the Immigration Rules on the basis of the true facts it had found as to SA’s nationality. The FtT considered that SA was eligible for such protection on the basis of those new facts.
The Court of Appeal, upholding the decision of the UT, has now confirmed that this approach was wrong in law and that the FtT was confined by the remit of its statutory jurisdiction under the 2002 Act to consider SA’s eligibility with reference to the facts she had relied on in her original claim for protection status. Where it had found that those facts were a total fiction, that was the end of the matter. This is because “there is an indissoluble link between the facts on which the claim for protection is made and the grant of protection status in response to that claim” and there was therefore no factual basis for the revoked status to continue to exist in SA’s case once the FtT had found that she had lied in her application.
The Court also dismissed SA’s argument that the UT had been procedurally unfair in not raising the issue of jurisdiction with her before reaching its decision. While the Court considered the UT should have given SA the opportunity to respond on the point, she had suffered no material prejudice as her representatives had had the opportunity to fully the argue the point on appeal.
While the comments were made obiter dicta, the Court also accepted for the first time that in cases where eligibility for international protection status was an issue – whether that status was as a refugee or under the humanitarian protection regime – the Robinson obvious doctrine can be invoked by the appellate courts in circumstances where the outcome of the point does not favour the appellant but aids the Secretary of State.
Katharine Elliot acted as sole counsel for the successful Secretary of State.
A copy of the judgment maybe accessed here.
