Court of Appeal
Published August 28, 2007

Regina (F (Mongolia)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

Judicial review was not available to challenge a refusal by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal to grant permission to appeal against an immigration judge’s decision.

The Court of Appeal (Sir Anthony Clarke, Master of the Rolls, Lord Justice Buxton and Lord Justice Lawrence Collins) so held in a reserved judgment on July 25, 2007, dismissing F’s appeal from Mr Nicholas Blake, QC, who, sitting as a deputy High Court judge on September 29, 2006, dismissed, by consent, F’s application for permission to apply for judicial review.

LORD JUSTICE BUXTON said that the new statutory appeal system introduced into the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 by the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc) Act 2004, was not significantly different from the previous regime and did not prevent the application of the principle formulated in R (G) v Secretary of State for the Home Department ([2005] 1 WLR 1445).

Nor was that case inconsistent with subsequent House of Lords authority: A v Secretary of State for the Home Department ([2005] 2 AC 68) and R (Clift) v Secretary of State for the Home Department ([2007] 1 AC 484).

The court therefore remained bound by G and the appeal and application for permission to move for judicial review failed in limine.

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