The Court of Appeal has allowed the Minister for Justice’s appeal against a High Court order that quashed a decision to leave a deportation order in place for RB, an Armenian national. The appeal court vacated the High Court order and dismissed RB’s judicial review application. It did not make a new deportation order; the appeal concerned the Minister’s 2010 refusal to revoke an order made in 2003.
RB’s application for refugee status had been refused, and the Minister made the deportation order in June 2003. In 2010, after an application for subsidiary protection was treated by the Minister as an application to revoke that order under section 3(11) of the Immigration Act 1999, the Minister decided the order should remain unchanged.
The High Court quashed that decision in 2014. It found that the Minister had failed to address country information about risks to Jehovah’s Witnesses in Armenia and had not dealt explicitly with two reports by consultant psychiatrist Dr Brian McCaffrey, which described RB as at high risk of suicide if deported.
In the appeal judgment delivered on 10 February 2017, Mr Justice Michael Peart said the High Court had applied the wrong approach to reviewing a refusal to revoke a deportation order. The Court of Appeal held that the Minister had considered the country information and was entitled to conclude it did not show a change in circumstances requiring revocation. It also noted that RB had consistently said he was not a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and had completed military service.
On the medical reports, the appeal court accepted that Dr McCaffrey’s 2005 reports were new in the limited sense that the Minister had not previously considered them. But it found that the Minister had considered them in 2010 and was not required to give them greater weight or address them in more detail. The court distinguished the question of whether the reports were new evidence from whether they raised a new issue or exceptional change in RB’s circumstances that could justify revoking the order.
The Court of Appeal therefore allowed the Minister’s appeal. The practical result was that the High Court’s order was vacated and RB’s judicial review application was dismissed.