The High Court has refused six applicants permission to appeal decisions concerning judicial reviews of asylum reports prepared under the Refugee Act 1996.
In a judgment delivered on 13 February 2017, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said the proposed appeal questions did not raise a point of exceptional public importance. The cases were brought against the Refugee Applications Commissioner. The court added the Minister for Justice and Equality as a respondent in each case and, following a statutory change effective from 1 January 2017, substituted the Chief International Protection Officer for the commissioner.
The first five applicants had been refused leave to bring judicial review proceedings in November 2016. The sixth applicant had received leave on certain grounds, but not on the ground raised in the first five cases. The new application sought leave to appeal those decisions.
The applicants’ first proposed question concerned whether preparing a draft report under section 13 of the 1996 Act amounted to an investigation, and whether an authorised officer could perform that function. Their counsel argued that a contractor’s draft was effectively the only investigation carried out.
Justice Humphreys said that was not the basis of his earlier decision. He had found that the commissioner reviewed the material before signing the section 13 report, and that this review formed part of the investigation. The commissioner had used a contractor to prepare draft reports and gather material, then considered and adopted the findings, the judge said. He concluded that the proposed question depended on a factual premise that did not arise from the decision under appeal.
The second proposed question alleged that the earlier judgment breached judicial comity or principles associated with a previous High Court ruling that had granted leave on a related point. Justice Humphreys said that ruling had been an unreasoned or barely reasoned, ex parte decision. In his view, it had no ratio decidendi and did not create a precedent requiring the court to follow it.
The judge also said the disputed issue concerned an office abolished from 1 January 2017 and was therefore of historical importance in the form presented. He noted that the 2015 International Protection Act provided expressly for contracts for services.
The court ordered that leave to appeal the decisions of 14 and 21 November 2016 be refused. The judgment determined the appeal-leave application; it did not decide the underlying asylum claims.