The Supreme Court has allowed an appeal in part by a Pakistani national and two Latvian nationals over a deportation order, holding that an earlier finding that the couple’s marriage was one of convenience did not make it legally void and could not, by itself, remove the need to assess Article 8 rights arising from their relationship.
The appeal concerned a 30 June 2017 deportation order against the first appellant. The Minister had refused his application for an EU residence card in July 2016 after determining that his marriage to the second appellant was a marriage of convenience. A review upheld that finding in March 2017. The appellants did not challenge the residence decision by judicial review.
The Supreme Court held that the Minister could rely on that unchallenged finding in the later deportation process. The residence and deportation decisions were made within a narrow timeframe and, on the evidence before the Court, there was no materially different factor or evidence between them. The Court said changed circumstances could require fresh consideration in another case, but that was not established here.
However, the Minister’s finding under the 2015 Regulations did not declare the marriage void. The Regulations allowed the Minister to disregard the marriage for the relevant immigration purposes; they did not give him power to decide its validity for all legal purposes. The Court also rejected the High Court’s view that the Civil Registration (Amendment) Act 2014 made an already solemnised marriage of convenience a nullity. The judgment left open whether a court, in a properly brought annulment case, might recognise a marriage of convenience as a ground for nullity.
The Court separately held that a marriage-of-convenience finding did not dispense with the Minister’s duty to consider family and private life rights in the deportation assessment. The first appellant’s submissions described a family life with his wife and her young son, whom he said he helped raise. The Court said those assertions provided a basis for assessing whether Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights was engaged. The Article 8 assessment appeared not to have occurred, because the Minister’s analysis treated the deportation as not interfering with family life on the basis of the marriage finding.
The Court said the Minister must assess any Article 8 rights and weigh them against the public interest, while noting that rights based on a relationship connected to a marriage of convenience may carry less weight. It did not itself conduct that balancing exercise. It allowed the appeal in part, leaving the earlier residence finding in place while rejecting the High Court’s conclusions on nullity and the need to consider rights arising from the underlying relationship.