The High Court dismissed a judicial review challenge to the refusal of subsidiary protection and a deportation order made against J.U., a Bangladeshi applicant. It also released the respondents from their undertaking not to deport him.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said the applicant had applied for asylum in March 2011, claiming that he had worked for an NGO and was attacked after trying to mediate a dispute involving a rape victim, the alleged perpetrator and residents. The asylum claim was rejected. An October 2009 subsidiary protection application referred to political opinion but did not specify it, and relied on the asylum file for its factual account.
Subsidiary protection was refused and a deportation order issued in August 2011. The applicant filed judicial review proceedings that month, and the court granted leave in October 2017, including on amended grounds. In March 2018, he applied to the Minister under section 3(11) to revoke the deportation order, expressly without prejudice to his challenge to its validity.
The judgment addressed whether making that revocation application amounted to accepting that the deportation order was valid. Humphreys rejected that proposition, describing the remedies as alternative rather than contradictory. He said an application to revoke an order does not, by itself, prejudice a separate challenge to that order. He noted, however, that an adverse decision on the later application could prejudice an applicant if it went unchallenged.
On the judicial review grounds, the judge said the pleadings were vague and boilerplate and did not justify relief. He also rejected the claim that the Minister had to clarify whether the subsidiary protection application relied on the same grounds as the asylum claim: the application expressly incorporated the asylum claim, and the applicant’s affidavit did not identify what different information he would have provided if asked.
The judge found no substance in the argument that country information was unavailable or did not exist when the application was made. The Minister could consider up-to-date mainstream material. The applicant’s 2009 application relied on material from 2006 and 2007, while the 2011 decision relied on material from 2009 and 2010. The applicant had not provided evidence that more recent material would have been significantly different or could have affected the decision.
The application was dismissed. The respondents were released from their undertaking not to deport the applicant.