IA022312016 & Ors.

These are the appeals of Christina [R], a citizen of India born 31 May 1985, and her dependents Joy [L] and [AJ] against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal of 20 November 2017. The original appeals were brought against the decision of 31 May 2016 to refuse her application as a Tier 4 student, her dependents being refused in line with her. Although there are multiple Appellants, given the case centres on the circumstances of Ms [R], I shall refer to her in the singular as "the Appellant".

Grounds of appeal of 27 November 2017 argued that the Judge had overlooked the detail of Professor French's evidence: it was clear that the chance of false positives was less than 2%. His conclusions were more contemporary and of at least equivalent expertise to those of Dr Harrison relied upon by the Tribunal in SM and Qadir , and thus demanded greater engagement than they had received. Furthermore, the judge had not identified compelling circumstances such as to justify a conclusion that the Appellant's private and family life rights were disproportionately breached.

The First-tier Tribunal granted permission to appeal on 20 April 2018 on the basis that the Secretary of State's more recent evidence from Professor French did not suffer from the "multiple frailties" of that criticised in SM and Qadir .

The First-tier Tribunal clearly scrutinised the appeal before it with care. It correctly applied the burden of proof, recognising that the Secretary of State had made out a prima facie case that had to be answered, before going on to conclude that the Appellant had provided a satisfactory explanation, which was of a quality to prevent the Secretary of State from discharging the ultimate legal burden.

Professor Peter French (BEd, BLing, PhD, FRSA, FIOA) describes himself as an experienced expert in the field of forensic speech and acoustics and chairman of J P French Associates. He has worked in the field for 30 years and, as well as carrying out research, has been involved in implementing quality regulation and accreditation for forensic speech science. In his 20 April 2016 report, he concludes: