Immigration

Appeal - decision to grant asylum support subject to condition - no jurisdiction to hear appeal against decision

R (Secretary of State for the Home Department) v Chief Asylum Support Adjudicator:QBD (Mr Justice Silber): 25 October 2002

The secretary of state decided, under section 95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, to grant an asylum seeker asylum support on the condition that he and his family moved from their existing home to a dispersal area to which they refused to travel.

The asylum seeker sought to appeal.

The chief asylum support adjudicator decided that he had jurisdiction to hear the appeal under section103 of the 1999 Act, on the basis that an appeal against the grant of support on a condition was in effect an appeal against a decision to stop support ('a stoppage appeal').

The secretary of state sought judicial review.

Pushpinder Saini (instructed by Treasury Solicitor) for the Secretary of State; Robin Tam (instructed by Treasury Solicitor) for the chief asylum support adjudicator; Simon Cox (instructed by Hackney Community Law Centre) for the asylum seeker as an interested party.

Held, granting judicial review, that the right to bring a stoppage appeal under section 103 depended on a decision to stop support before it would otherwise come to an end; that an asylum seeker therefore had to show an existing right to section 95 support which had been prematurely terminated by the decision; that, since the decision letter had stated clearly that the support had been granted on the condition that it was only available in a dispersal area, there was no pre-existing right to support; and that, accordingly, the adjudicator had no jurisdiction to hear an appeal.