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The Supreme Court (Lord Reed, Lord Hodge and Lord Lloyd-Jones) has refused permission to appeal to Shamima Begum in her attempt to challenge the Secretary of State’s decision to deprive her of her British citizenship.
The Court of Appeal (Lady Carr CJ, Bean and Whipple LJJ) handed down its judgment in Ms Begum’s appeal in February this year. The Court rejected the appeal on all grounds, upholding the decision of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission in favour of the Secretary of State.
Ms Begum was one of the three Bethnal Green schoolgirls who left the UK in 2015 and travelled to Syria where they aligned with ISIL. Following a series of interviews she gave to the media from a refugee camp in northern Syria in February 2019, the Secretary of State (the Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP) decided to deprive her of her British citizenship. She appealed against that decision and later applied for entry clearance to enable her to enter the UK to take part in her appeal. She had a separate appeal and judicial review against the decision to refuse to grant her entry clearance. Preliminary issues in those challenges were considered by the Supreme Court, who found in favour of the Secretary of State on all grounds in February 2021. Her substantive appeal was then heard by SIAC in November 2022. SIAC dismissed the appeal in February 2023. The Court of Appeal heard Ms Begum’s appeal in October 2023.
In her application to the Supreme Court, Ms Begum advanced 4 grounds of appeal: trafficking (Art 4 ECHR), de facto statelessness, procedural fairness (no opportunity to make prior representations) and breach of the public sector equality duty. The Supreme Court refused permission to appeal on all grounds.
The Supreme Court gave detailed reasons for its decision which can be found here.
The Court of Appeal’s judgment can be found here.
Press reports of the decision can be found here: BBC News, The Guardian and Sky news.
David Blundell KC represented the Secretary of State for the Home Department at all stages in the litigation, led by First Treasury Counsel, Sir James Eadie KC and Jonathan Glasson KC.
