The High Court refused an applicant leave to seek judicial review of a first-instance decision in his subsidiary protection case, despite finding that the decision-maker had made an error of law by failing to address a late claim about indiscriminate violence in Nigeria.
In an ex tempore judgment delivered on 13 October 2015, Mr Justice MacEochaidh said that judicial review of an initial asylum-process decision required the applicant to identify an error of law and explain why it was serious enough to warrant intervention. Not every such error justified judicial review, he said; the interests of justice remained paramount.
The applicant’s solicitors sent a letter to the first-instance decision-maker after an interview on 14 January 2015, raising for the first time a fear of indiscriminate violence in Nigeria under Article 15(c) of Directive 2004/83/EC. The judgment said the claim had not been included in the application form or raised during the interview. Asked whether the matters discussed in the interview made up the entirety of his claim, the applicant had answered “yes”. The letter gave no explanation for raising the new ground at that stage.
The judge accepted that the first-instance decision did not mention the late claim and that this was an error of law. But he concluded that the applicant and his lawyers had contributed to the late submission, which came after the oral procedure had ended and without explanation to either the decision-maker or the court. He also referred to the decision-maker’s significant rejection of the applicant’s credibility and his view that the applicant had abused the asylum process in several countries.
The court held that the interests of justice would not be served by setting aside the first-instance decision to correct the error. It found that the applicant could pursue the matter fully before the Refugee Appeals Tribunal and that this provided an adequate remedy without injustice. The court therefore rejected the application for leave to seek judicial review. The judgment does not determine the underlying subsidiary protection claim.