Immigration

Asylum - adjudicator making inadequate findings of fact - parties agreeing referral to different adjudicator - duty of Immigration Appeal Tribunal to consider appealYelocagi v Secretary of State for the Home Department: CA (Kennedy and Mance LJJ):16 May 2000

The appellant, a Turkish Kurd, left Turkey and claimed political asylum in the UK, although the first safe country he had arrived in was Italy.

His claim was refused by the secretary of state.

His appeal to a special adjudicator was dismissed but both parties agreed that the adjudicator had made inadequate findings of fact and that the proper course was for the case to be remitted to a different adjudicator.On appeal the Immigration Appeal Tribunal rejected that course and proceeded to hear the appeal, which was dismissed.

The appellant appealed.Duran Seddon (instructed by Winstanley Burgess) for the appellant.

Ashley Underwood (instructed by the treasury solicitor) for the secretary of state.Held, allowing the appeal, that r.35(1)(d) of the Asylum Appeals (Procedure) Rules 1996 entitled the tribunal to adopt the course proposed by the parties but did not oblige it to do so; that if the tribunal considered that there was enough in the adjudicator's decision to allow it to reach a determination, the tribunal was under a duty to proceed to hear the appeal despite the agreement; that on the facts the case should be remitted to a differently constituted tribunal.