The High Court has refused an application for leave to appeal in joined judicial review proceedings brought by Amardeep Singh, Una Kumar and two minors, and by Yunlong Li, against the Minister for Justice and Equality.
In a judgment delivered on 8 October 2019, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said the key questions about interpreting section 4 of the Immigration Act 2004 had already been clarified at appellate level. He concluded there was no point in granting leave to appeal.
The application followed an earlier judgment, Singh v Minister for Justice and Equality (No. 1), in which the court dismissed the judicial review proceedings on several grounds. Those included that a challenge to a mere proposal was generally inappropriate, that a decision could not be challenged on a point that had not actually been made, and that the applicants had not yet been disadvantaged by any process outside the 2004 Act. The court also said the applications insofar as they concerned the 2004 Act were misconceived.
The earlier judgment further found that the evidence presented was inadequate to establish discrimination or arbitrary application of the Act, and that even such evidence would not have entitled the applicants to the relief sought. In Li’s case, the court said it would have refused the application on discretionary grounds if it had not already failed on the merits.
At the leave hearing, counsel for the applicants limited oral submissions to the first question about the 2004 Act raised in written submissions. Justice Humphreys said appellate judgments, although not necessarily addressing that question in its precise wording, logically meant that a person whose section 4 permission had expired for more than a de minimis period could not rely on section 4 to circumvent the deportation process. He added that the multiple independent reasons for dismissing the original proceedings also weighed against finding the test for leave satisfied.
The court refused leave to appeal. The judgment does not record a further order.