Generate a structured brief — facts, issues, held, reasoning, and significance — for this case in seconds. Or browse the verbatim judgment via the source links below.
The Claimants appealed against this decision to the First-tier Tribunal under section 82 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (NIAA). In a decision promulgated on 4 July 2017 First-tier Tribunal Judge Frazer allowed the appeal finding that the Secretary of State had not discharged the legal burden of proving the Claimant to be dishonest. The Secretary of State sought permission to appeal against this decision on the grounds that the First-tier Tribunal Judge had failed to give adequate reasons for her findings.
Permission to appeal was granted by Upper Tribunal Judge Kebede on renewal to the Upper Tribunal on the grounds that there was arguable merit in the assertion that the Judge failed to give full and proper reasons for concluding that deception did not occur and accorded inappropriate weight to the first Claimant's ability to speak English, contrary to the observations made in MA (ETS - TOEIC testing) Nigeria [2016] UKUT 450 .
The Secretary of State averred that there may be reasons why a person who was able to speak English to the required level would nevertheless cause or permit a proxy candidate to undertake an ETS test on their behalf or otherwise to cheat. The First-tier Tribunal had materially erred by failing to give adequate reasons for holding that a person who clearly spoke English would therefore have no reason to secure a test certificate by deception. It is submitted that the Judge's findings are inadequately reasoned.
The appeal therefore came before the Upper Tribunal in order to determine whether there was an error of law in the decision of Judge Frazer and if so whether to set that decision aside.
Mr Pannikar submitted that TOIEC cases were fact specific. In this Claimant's case the fact finding had been adequate. There was a big difference between this case and the case of MA . In MA there were many discrepancies in the evidence. That was not the case here. The Claimant gave reasonable explanations which were accepted by the Judge. The fact finding was final and the case law supported the fact that the Claimant had discharged burden.
Auto-extracted from BAILII. Full structured brief in progress — the source links below give you the verbatim judgment in the meantime.
Multiple official and mirror sources — pick whichever loads cleanly on your network.
Common Room
0 comments · About the Common Room →
No comments yet — start the discussion.
Voted-best comments help future students and feed Caselaw's AI study tools.