Tribunal decisions

The decision

BR (Article 8 - Proportionality - Delay - Shala) Serbia & Montenegro [2004] UKIAT 00078
IMMIGRATION APPEAL TRIBUNAL

Date heard: 6 April 2004
Date notified: 23 April 2004
Before

DR H H STOREY (VICE PRESIDENT)
MR A J CRAGG CMG
MISS J BRAYBROOK

Between

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT

Appellant

And

Respondent
Representatives
Ms C Hanrahan appeared for the appellant; Mr R Harrap of Counsel instructed by Pearson & Winston Solicitors for the respondent.

DETERMINATION OF APPEAL AND REASONS

1. The appellant, the Secretary of State, has appealed with leave of the Tribunal against a determination of Adjudicator, Mr S M Southgate, allowing on Art 8 grounds the appeal of the respondent, a national of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia), against the decision to give directions for removal following refusal to grant asylum. To avoid confusion the respondent is hereafter referred to as the “claimant”.

2. The asylum grounds of appeal were withdrawn before the Adjudicator and the human rights grounds limited to Art 8. The Adjudicator decided that the decision to remove the claimant was “completely disproportionate” for the following reasons:

“1. He has lived here since 1997. He applied for asylum on arrival. The Respondent took almost exactly four years to reach a decision. If his asylum application had been dealt with reasonably efficiency (sic) there is a strong argument to suggest that he would have been granted asylum. At the time of his application and sometime thereafter, Milosevic was still in power. Matters were very different then from the position existing now. In the case of Arben Shala [2003] EWCA Civ 233 it was held that where exceptional circumstances existed those exceptional circumstances should be taken into account in the balancing exercise. The Appellant’s father was granted refugee status in January 2000. It is reasonable to assume that if the Appellant’s case had been dealt with at the same time he would have stood a good chance of success either on the initial application or on appeal.

2. The Appellant’s mother and father have refugee status. If the Appellant is returned to Serbia Montenegro now they will be unable to visit him. The family’s unit will be broken forever.

3. Similarly, as his brother’s case has still not been dealt with it is more than likely that when it is eventually dealt with his claim will succeed, taking account of the Shala case mentioned above.

4. There is no home for him to return to and he has a settled life here. “

3. The grounds of appeal as amplified by Miss Hanrahan raised several challenges to these findings. The principal ones were that the Adjudicator had erred in assuming that the claimant’s return would break his family ties with his family members in the UK “forever”, erred in assuming a successful outcome of his brother’s appeal and wrongly considered that there was a special or exceptional delay of the type dealt with in Shala and in subsequent Tribunal case law.

4. We have concluded that the Adjudicator’s conclusions were erroneous.

5. In the first place, we do not think that he was entitled to treat the anticipated outcome of the brother’s case as an additional reason for allowing the appeal. We would accept that if he was right to apply Shala principles to the claimant’s case, he was justified in considering that Shala would also apply to his brother. But he did not have all the relevant evidence before him in order to decide whether the brother’s case was essentially on all fours with the claimant’s; and, even if it was on all fours, the claimant was only entitled to benefit from the Shala point (if at all) once, not twice over. Certainly in the absence of any evidence to show a particularly close bond between the claimant and his brother, a bond over and above the ordinary ties of affection between adult siblings, this factor should not have been accorded separate weight.

6. In the second place, we agree with Miss Hanrahan that the Adjudicator was not entitled to find, as a result of the decision to remove, that the claimant`s family unit would be “broken forever”. Properly assuming a complete and permanent cessation of the family unit presupposed not only that the other members of the family could not return to FRY (Serbia) and resume living together with the claimant there; it also presupposed that he and the other members of the family could not live together in some other country. It is true that the claimant’s father and mother had refugee status, but that was said to be on the basis of the father’s difficulties at the hands of the Milosevic regime and Mr Harrap did not seek to contend that the father would still be at risk in FRY (Serbia) currently. Nor did he seek to contend that there would be any other insurmountable obstacles preventing the family unit resuming their life together back in FRY (Serbia).

7. However, we do not consider that these two errors were sufficient in themselves to justify overturning the Adjudicator`s principal conclusion. We would accept that if the Adjudicator was right to consider that the claimant was entitled to benefit from the Shala point, his allowance of the Art 8 grounds of appeal was still justified. Miss Hanrahan sought to challenge this by reference to the recent decision of the Tribunal in [2004] UKIAT 00024 M (Croatia) starred emphasising that an Adjudicator is not entitled to treat the issue as being whether he or she considers a decision disproportionate, but has rather to decide whether the Secretary of State’s decision that removal would be proportionate was lawful (in the sense of being within the range of reasonable responses). However, the Court of Appeal in Arben Shala did not view this modality as affecting the proper outcome of that appeal and, by the same token, we do not see that it can affect the proper outcome of this appeal.

8. Was the Adjudicator right then to consider that Shala principles applied? Since that Court of Appeal judgment there have been a number of Tribunal decisions dealing with their precise scope, the main one cited to us being [2004] UKIAT 00016 J. It is unfortunate that the Adjudicator made no reference to any post-Shala cases and gave no reasoning of his own for why he thought the facts in Shala were on all fours with the claimant’s. He appears to have proceeded on the basis that Shala extended to cover all persons who, within a reasonable period of time during which to expect a decision, could have shown they qualified as refugees because of the state of civil war or wide-scale armed conflict in their country. However, neither Shala nor any other court or Tribunal case has gone that far.

9. In any event, since neither party sought to argue that the summary of conclusions set out in J was wrong, we consider that our assessment of whether the Adjudicator in this case properly applied Shala can be made, in the interests of consistency of approach, by direct reference to that summary. This stated:

Summary of conclusions on the Shala “delay” point
38.
(i) In conducting the balancing exercise under Art 8 the existence of any unreasonable period of delay is ordinarily a relevant factor, although given the margin of discretion accorded to the interest of the Secretary of State in the maintenance of effective immigration control, this will rarely be a decisive factor unless accompanied by other special circumstances which disclose particular prejudice to a claimant.

(ii) The Shala point can be extended to apply to close family relationships other than marriage relationships.

(iii) The Shala point only covers delay underpinned by special or exceptional circumstances and which is predicated on three things:

(a) the fact that the appellant had a legitimate claim to enter at the time when, on any reasonable basis, his claim should have been determined;
(b) the fact that, had his asylum application been dealt with reasonably efficiently, he would have been likely to have obtained at least exceptional leave to remain;
(c) the fact that his private or family life had only become significantly established as a result of the time spent by him in the UK where he formed a relationship. Accordingly possession of ELR, if it had been granted when it should have been, would thereby have given him the ability to apply from within the UK for a variation of leave on the grounds of his relationship.

Thus the Shala point depends on the existence of all three preconditions and has little or no application in other contexts.”

10. There is no dispute in this case that the first two of the three preconditions set out in J applied in this case. At the time the claimant arrived in the UK he had a legitimate claim to enter (by virtue of the existence of a policy in place to prevent removals to FRY) and continued to have such a claim at least until the fall of Milosevic on 6 October 2000. Had his asylum application been dealt with reasonably efficiently, he would have been likely to have obtained at least exceptional leave to remain (ELR). Mr Harrap did seek to suggest that it was likely this claimant would have indeed obtained refugee status and hence indefinite leave to remain (ILR). However, he based this suggestion solely on the fact that the claimant’s father was granted refugee status and ILR in January 2000. However, his father had come to the UK much earlier than the claimant and there is nothing to indicate that the Secretary of State would have assimilated the claimant’s case to that of his father: by the time the claimant came to the UK in 1997 he was already in his early 20s and so was not entitled to be treated as a dependant of his father. There was nothing to indicate that the Secretary of State, had he made a prompt decision, would have taken a different view of this claimant from that which he would have taken in relation to other FRY claimants who stood to be granted ELR on a timeous consideration of their claim.

11. The question remains, however, whether this claimant met the third precondition. We do not consider that he did.

12. As noted in J at para 38 (ii), the Shala point can be extended to cover close family relationships other than marriage. And we accept that in this case there was evidence that for much if not most of the time since arrival in the UK the claimant has lived in the same household as his father, mother and brother. However, there was no satisfactory evidence before the Adjudicator to show that the emotional ties that existed between him and his parents and brother went beyond the normal emotional ties between an adult and his parents and siblings: see Kugathas [2003] EWCA Civ 31; [2003] INLR 170, also [2004] UKIAT 00027 H (Somalia) para 24. Nor was there any satisfactory evidence that at any stage since arrival in the UK the claimant has been economically dependent wholly or mainly on his parents and brother; and indeed what evidence there is indicated that he and his brother quickly obtained employment. There was no evidence either that the claimant had any health difficulties. And finally, there was no evidence that the claimant had formed any particularly close relationships with a partner. That being the case, we agree with Miss Hanrahan that the claimant had failed to establish a family life such as could become the subject of interference or a disproportionate interference within the meaning of Art 8.

13. It was argued by Mr Harrap that even if the claimant could not rely on a family life relationship within the meaning of Art 8 he could relay on a set of private life relationships or factors. We do not consider that the point has any merit. Even if his relationships with his father, mother and brother are redescribed as significant private life relationships, it remains that they were relationships between an adult claimant and parents and an adult sibling and are relationships which did not involve ties of affection over and above those normally enjoyed between an adult claimant and parents and an adult sibling. If Mr Harrap`s point was that under the aegis of private life it was necessary also to take account of the fact that he had gainful employment and was not a burden on the state and had formed ties with persons at work and in the community, we fail to see that these features added such weight as would make interference with his private life disproportionate.

14. Not pursued with any vigour by Mr Harrap but further considered by us was a further issue. This was whether one could say, by analogy with Shala, that there was an Immigration Rule category which the claimant as someone in the UK could have applied for and benefited from had a timeous decision being made (resulting in exceptional leave to remain). Plainly there was an immigration rule the claimant could have applied under on these assumed circumstances: paragraph 317 of HC395. Plainly too under this rule it is possible for a person in the UK to be considered notionally as if on the date of decision he had remained in his country of origin: Saumtally (3005), ex parte Gomes [1985] Imm AR 15, Uppal (11275).

15. However, we cannot see that it is a provision of the Immigration Rules that the claimant could have benefited from. For one thing we do not consider that the claimant could notionally have been treated as living alone in the most exceptional compassionate circumstances. By 6 October 2000 the Milosevic regime had fallen and thereafter the claimant could not have shown there were any political reasons giving rise to exceptional compassionate circumstances. He might have been able to show he would have had to live alone, but not that he would have had to live alone in the most exceptional compassionate circumstances. He was, after all, a single male in good health.

16. It might be argued that the relevant date to make the notional assessment under paragraph 317 was prior to the fall of Milosevic. We rejected that approach. The claimant’s father only obtained ILR in January 2001 and there would have been nothing unreasonable or unduly excessive about a period of delay of less than one year in the processing of any subsequent after-entry dependent relative application.

17. Another difficulty in the way of Mr Harrap`s contention based on paragraph 317 is that, even if the claimant could notionally be considered at the date of decision as living alone in the most exceptional compassionate circumstances as well as able to meet other subparagraphs, there remains the fact that paragraph 317 (1) (f) also requires evidence that the claimant at the date of decision was (would have been) mainly dependent financially on relatives settled in the UK. Such evidence was (or would have been) wholly lacking in this case.

18. We do not consider, therefore, that the Adjudicator was entitled to allow the appeal on Art 8 grounds. The only tenable basis on which he could have allowed it was if the Shala principle applied to the claimant’s situation. For reasons we have given, we are satisfied he was wrong to consider that the Shala principle applied in this case. Accordingly there was no basis for concluding that the decision of the Secretary of State was unlawful or disproportionate.

19. For the above reasons the appeal of the Secretary of State is allowed.

DR H H STOREY
VICE-PRESIDENT