The High Court granted a Nigerian mother and her three children leave to seek judicial review over the Minister for Justice’s failure to decide their request to revoke deportation orders. The court refused leave to challenge the orders themselves.
In a judgment delivered on 24 January 2006, Ms Justice Finlay Geoghegan said the family had established an arguable case that fair procedures required the Minister to determine their revocation request within a reasonable time. The judge considered that time had expired before the leave hearing in October 2005.
The family’s solicitor had written to the Department of Justice on 7 March 2005, asking the Minister not to enforce the orders and ultimately seeking their revocation. The letter enclosed updated medical reports concerning the mother’s persistent lower back pain and reduced spinal and hip mobility, as well as community letters about the family’s integration and the children’s schooling. The judgment records that the Department acknowledged the correspondence would receive attention, but the Minister provided no evidence that the revocation request had been substantively answered before the hearing.
The judge said the letter was confusing in the context of the statutory process. It was headed as further representations under section 3 of the Immigration Act 1999, although the deportation orders had already been made and served. The applicants’ counsel accepted that section 3(3)(b) representations could not be made at that later stage, and instead relied on the Minister’s power under section 3(11) to revoke deportation orders.
The court refused leave to seek certiorari quashing the orders because the applicants had not established substantial grounds that they were invalid. Counsel did not pursue a challenge to the regulations governing the form of the orders.
The leave granted concerns the claim that the Minister should consider and determine the revocation request. The judge stayed the leave order for 21 days to allow the Minister to consider the judgment and, if appropriate, issue a decision. If a decision was issued to the applicants within that period, the leave order would be vacated and the proceedings struck out. The judge also said a stay on deportation was warranted unless the existing undertaking not to deport continued. The matter was listed for mention on 21 February 2006, with costs also to be addressed.