The High Court dismissed Y.Y.’s challenges to two ministerial decisions refusing to revoke a deportation order, but did not determine the validity of the underlying deportation order on the merits in its initial ruling. After the applicant chose not to make further submissions on that issue, the court dismissed the proceedings in full and listed costs submissions.
The case concerns repeated applications under section 3(11) of the Immigration Act 1999 to revoke a deportation order. Earlier decisions had quashed the first three refusals. The present phase concerned a residual challenge to the fourth refusal, made on 22 November 2018, and a challenge to the fifth refusal, dated 15 March 2019.
The applicant argued that the Minister’s treatment of reports about secret or incommunicado detention in Algeria amounted to a concession that such centres existed, and that deportation would expose the applicant to a risk of torture or other prohibited treatment. The applicant also argued that the fifth decision was irrational and had not dispelled doubts about that risk.
The judge rejected the claim that the Minister had made a material concession. He said the decision read the limited United Nations Human Rights Committee material in the applicant’s favour, but considered it alongside other country information. The Minister had acknowledged reports of isolated ill-treatment in Algeria, while concluding they did not show a widespread practice or a relevant increase in risk to this applicant.
The court also rejected the irrationality challenge, referring to the Minister’s assessment of the applicant’s individual circumstances and the broader country situation. The judge said the applicant had not shown that the issue of secret detention outweighed the factors supporting the Minister’s conclusion. He clarified that a judicial review court assesses whether an administrative decision can stand under judicial review principles; it does not itself decide whether doubts about risk have been dispelled.
The judge noted that circumstances in Algeria had changed after the Minister’s latest decision, but neither side had pleaded an issue based on those changes. He said they might be relevant in another forum if a future assessment of the applicant’s situation were undertaken.
After the ruling, counsel for the applicant sought time to consider further submissions about the original deportation order, separate from the challenges to the section 3(11) decisions. Counsel then said there were none. The judge dismissed the proceedings in toto and listed the matter for submissions on costs. The judgment does not state the result of any later costs hearing.