OA216372012 & OA216382012

This is an appeal against a determination of Judge Broe sitting in the First-tier Tribunal dated 12 August of this year. The judge dismissed appeals from the appellants, who are a mother and daughter in China. The first appellant, who is 31 years old, applied for entry clearance as a wife of the sponsor, Mr Deng, who is here today.

Subsequent to that the appellant gave a notice of appeal in late October last year. The lawyers acting on her behalf and on behalf of her daughter said that she had provided a letter from Her Majesty�s Revenue and Customs bearing the sponsor�s registration number, and his income from self-employment �should be about �22,480�. There were certain documents provided including a letter from the sponsor�s accountants, his online tax return for 2011 to 2012, a letter from the tax authorities, a notice of national insurance contributions and a self-assessment statement dated 2 December 2012.

The judge first considered what version of the Immigration Rules applied. The first application was made before the Rules had changed. The judge said that he was satisfied that the first application was rejected because the wrong forms had been used. If that was not the case, then the appellants would have had no need to submit further forms. Therefore the judge concluded that the new Rules, which came in after the first application, applied.

The grounds mention that the sponsor had just received an annual account which had been completed recently by his accountant and there were a letter and tax payments in relation to that. We note that that is information which came after the decision and therefore cannot be taken into account. The grounds also mention that the judge failed to consider that the sponsor had purchased the new home. We again comment that that is irrelevant under the Rules.

Turning to the MM point, the submission made in both the grounds and in Mr Adolphi�s skeleton argument is that this sponsor had a total income of �16,782, had paid taxes on that and that amount was above the minimum income level for an adult on a 40 hour week. The view that Mr Justice Blake had adopted, especially at paragraph 124 of the MM judgment, was that there should be a focus on the �13,400 level which had been identified as the lowest maintenance threshold by the Immigration Advisory Committee, close to the adult minimum wage for a 40 hour week.