This case involved appeals by asylum seekers requesting to stay in the UK on the grounds that they would be persecuted if they returned home, the Immigration Appeals Tribunal (AIT) rejecting their requests.
One issue arising in this case was the fact that new evidence supporting Plaintiff’s claim had come to light after the hearing at the Special Immigration Appeals Tribunal but before judgment was promulgated, but the IAT refused to take it into account.
Plaintiff appealed when he lost his hearing at AIT.
This was not the main issue here, so that CA didn’t have to decide on it directly. However note the comments of Carnwath LJ (delivering the court’s judgment):
The time has now come to accept that a mistake of fact giving rise to unfairness is a separate head of challenge in an appeal on a point of law, at least in those statutory contexts where the parties share an interest in cooperating to achieve the correct result [as is the case in CICB]. Asylum law is undoubtedly such an area.
In order to find unfairness there has to be:
A mistake as to an existing fact;
The fact must have been “established” i.e. objectively verifiable;
The appellant mustn’t have been responsible for the mistake; and
The mistake must have played a material (though not necessarily decisive) role in the tribunal’s decision.
Administrative Law notes fully updated for recent exams at Oxford and C...
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