IA021642016 & Ors.

The appellant in this appeal is the Secretary of State for the Home Department and the respondents are Mrs [H], her husband and children. However, it is more convenient to refer to the parties as they were before the First-tier Tribunal and therefore I shall refer from now on to Mrs [H] as "the appellant" and to the Secretary of State as "the respondent". Mrs [H]'s husband and children are dependents on her appeal.

The appeal was heard by Judge of the First-tier Tribunal C H Bennett at the Taylor House hearing centre on 6 October 2017. In a thorough and detailed decision, the judge came to the conclusion that, although he did not consider the appellant's evidence relating to the English language test satisfactory, he was satisfied she took the tests and that she was a genuine student. He therefore allowed the appeal.

Permission to appeal was granted by the First-tier Tribunal because it was considered arguable the judge had failed to apply the correct test when considering deception in relation to an English test.

The appellant did not file a rule 24 response opposing the appeal. I pause to note that this might be considered surprising given the decision under appeal in this case did not contain any allegation of deception such that the approach explained in SM and Qadir needed to be applied.

Mr Bramble acknowledged there was no material error in the judge's decision. The judge had considered all the arguments and made a finding which was not perverse. ETS had not invalidated the appellant's test result and the issue of deception had not been raised against the appellant. There was no error in his failing to apply SM and Qadir .