IA v Secretary of State for the Home Department

Hearing dates: 4 and 5 November 2025

Approved Judgment

This judgment was handed down remotely at 10.00am on 26 November 2025 by circulation to the parties or their representatives by e-mail and by release to the National Archives.

Sir Geoffrey Vos, MASTER OF THE ROLLS, Lord Justice Dingemans, SENIOR PRESIDENT OF TRIBUNALS, and

Introduction

This case concerns the proper meaning of article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the ECHR) (article 8).

A family of 6 persons resident in Gaza (father, mother and four children aged 18, 17, 8 and 7 in September 2024) (together the family) applied to enter the United Kingdom to join their sponsor, who is the younger brother of the father (the sponsor). The sponsor has lived and worked in the UK since 2007, and is now a British citizen. It is common ground that the family could not have successfully applied to enter the UK under the applicable Immigration Rules (the Rules).

The family's applications for entry clearance were refused in May 2024. Their appeals to the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) (the FTT) were dismissed. The FTT decided that family life, within the meaning of article 8(1), had existed between the sponsor and the family since the start of the Gaza conflict in late 2023, but that the refusal of entry clearance was not a disproportionate interference with that family life under article 8(2).

The Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) (the UT) allowed the family's appeal from the FTT. The UT upheld the FTT's decision as to the existence of family life, but held that the FTT had made material errors of law in applying article 8(2). The UT decided to re-make the decision. Its conclusion was that the decision to refuse the family entry to the UK was an interference with their family life infringing article 8.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (the SSHD) is appealing the UT's decisions as to the existence of family life and its conclusions on the proportionality balance under article 8(2). The SSHD contended that: (a) on a proper understanding of the law as to the meaning of “family life”, the family and the sponsor did not enjoy family life under article 8(1), (b) even if such family life did exist, the UT was wrong at [166] to consider the free-standing article 8 rights of the family, rather than just those of the sponsor, in undertaking the proportionality balance required by article 8(2), and (c) the UT gave the wrong weight to the risks to the lives of the family and their dire situation in the Gaza warzone, and gave the wrong weight to the importance of UK immigration control and the short-lived family life that had existed in this case.

The family supported the decisions of the FTT and the UT as to the meaning of family life, and the decision of the UT as to the proportionality balance under article 8(2).

It is important to set out immediately the full terms of article 8 as follows:

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

The words that are particularly important for this case are that: “[e]veryone has the right to respect for his … family life”, and “[t]here shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of [the right to family life] except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of … the economic well-being of the country … or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others”. We emphasise the words of article 8 at the outset because it is apparent that, in some of the cases, the terms of the rights protected by article 8 are not given sufficient prominence.

We have decided that the SSHD's appeal should be allowed on grounds 1 and 3 and in part on ground 2. Our reasons can be summarised briefly here.

First, the consistent jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (the ECtHR) has been that “family life for the purpose of Article 8 … is normally limited to the core family and that there will be no family life between parents and adult children or adult siblings unless they can demonstrate “additional elements of dependence, involving more than the normal emotional ties”” (see Kumari v. The Netherlands 44051/20, 10 December 2024 ( Kumari) at [35], and Beoku-Betts v. SSHD [2008] UKHL 39, [2009] 1 AC 115 ( Beoku-Betts) at [39]). The FTT did not apply that test, but instead asked itself whether the sponsor had provided “real, effective or committed support” to his brother and the family (see [18] and [25] of the FTT decision). The real, effective or committed support test is lower than the additional elements of dependence test. Applying the proper test, neither the brother nor his family had shown that they had family life with the sponsor for the purposes of article 8(1).

Secondly, if there had been family life between the sponsor and his family (as found by the FTT), it would have been appropriate to have regard to the unitary nature of that family life (see Beoku-Betts at [4], [20] and [41]–[43]). We accept, however, that, in undertaking the proportionality balance under article 8(2), the court is looking primarily at the article 8 rights of those persons within the jurisdiction of article 1 of the ECtHR (in this case, the sponsor).

Thirdly, we have concluded that the UT made several errors in undertaking the proportionality balance under article 8(2). Even if, contrary to what we have decided, family life had existed between the sponsor and the family, the balance should not have been determined in favour of granting the family entry clearance. Very exceptional or compelling circumstances had not been shown. The UT was wrong to pay so little regard to the immigration control policies of the SSHD and the UK Government, as reflected in the Rules, as expressing what was necessary in the interests of the economic well-being of the UK and for the protection of the rights of the citizens of the UK. The UT wrongly over-stated the importance of the family's short-lived family life with the sponsor (had it existed at all), the best interests of the children of the family and the admittedly serious risks faced by the family in Gaza.

With that introduction, we will deal with the issues under the following headings: (i) the relevant facts, (ii) the FTT's decision, (iii) the UT's decision, (iv) chronological treatments of each of the ECtHR and the domestic authorities that are relevant to the existence of article 8(1) family life between adult siblings, (v) a chronological treatment of the authorities showing how the rights of persons outside the jurisdiction of the ECHR are to be treated in weighing the proportionality balance under article 8(2), (vi) a chronological treatment of the authorities relevant to the weighing of that balance, (vii) whether the tribunals were right about the existence of family life, (viii) whether the UT was right to accord weight to the article 8 rights of the family in addition to the sponsor, (ix) whether the UT was right to hold that the decision to refuse the family entry to the UK was an interference with their family life infringing article 8, and (x) conclusions.

The relevant facts

Most of the following facts are taken from [21]–[24] of the FTT decision, and [3]–[5] and [118]–[138] of the UT decision. The UT said at [106] and [118] that it was remaking the proportionality decision on the basis of facts already found by the FTT (which were preserved) “together with our assessment of updating evidence on the circumstances of the [family] and sponsor”. Reference should be made to the...