R A (A Minor) v Secretary of State for the Home Department
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Steven Kovats |
| Judgment Date | 12 June 2018 |
| Neutral Citation | [2018] EWHC 2140 (Admin) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Docket Number | CO/1171/2018 |
| Date | 12 June 2018 |
[2018] EWHC 2140 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Steven Kovats QC
(Sitting as a Deputy Judge of the High Court)
CO/1171/2018
APPEARANCES
Ms A. Weston QC appeared on behalf of the Claimant.
Mr J. Orde (instructed by the Government Legal Department) appeared on behalf of the Defendant.
THE DEPUTY JUDGE:
This is an application for permission to apply for judicial review. The claim form was filed on 12 March of this year and it challenged a decision of the Secretary of State for the Home Department not to process the claimant's application for registration as a British citizen under s.1(3) of the British Nationality Act 1981 and/or s.3(1) of that Act in the absence of payment of the fee of, then, £587.
Since then the fee has been paid. I am told, surprisingly but I accept, it is the position that the claimant does not know who paid the fee. [After I had given judgment, Ms Weston QC told me that it was the understanding of the claimant that the local authority had paid the fee, but that she had not received official confirmation of this.] The fact remains, however, that the fee has been paid and the claimant accepts in terms, correctly in my judgment, that as far as she is concerned this application for permission to apply for judicial review is academic. There has been an attempt to amend the grounds to claim some sort of loss but I am unpersuaded that there is any substantive merit in any of those amendments. They are, in my judgment, no more than a make-weight attempt to try and get over the point that the claim is, indeed, academic.
The claimant is instructed by the “Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens”, which is, according to its letterhead, hosted by the Migrants Resource Centre. As its name applies, it has a legitimate interest in pursuing claims of this nature. Ms Weston QC, on behalf of the claimant, seeks permission to proceed with this claim on the grounds that, although it is academic as far as the claimant herself is concerned, it raises a point of public interest which should be the subject of a substantive hearing. In particular, she seeks to challenge the validity of the fees regime and the Immigration and Nationality (Fees Order) and the Immigration and Nationality (Fees Regulations) made pursuant to the Immigration Act 2014 and, in broad terms, what she seeks to challenge is the fact that the 2014 Act, specifically ss.68 and 69, makes provision for fees to be charged at rates that exceed the cost of processing the individual application.
It is also to be noted that a similar challenge, similar but not identical, was lodged in a case called VF and, again, that claim became academic because the fee was paid and the applicant was registered as a British citizen. In the light of that, Anthony Elleray QC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, dismissed the claim without consideration of the merits in a judgment that is cited as [2017] EWHC 3138 (Admin). There is currently pending before the Court of Appeal an application for permission to appeal the learned Deputy High Court Judge's judgment. That has three potential difficulties in its way. First, the Legal Aid Agency has not yet decided whether to provide funding for that appeal. Secondly, as I have said, the claim is, indeed, academic. Thirdly, the Court of Appeal may not look favourably upon the idea of hearing an appeal where there is no judgment below that deals with the merits of the claim. Be that as it may, that is a case where similar considerations have arisen which may, and I put it no higher than that, lead the Court of Appeal to decide that it does, indeed, want to consider the full appeal. There is a small difference in that the statutory provision in play in VF is s.1(4) rather than s.1(3), but I do not think that that makes any material difference to the fundamental question as to whether an academic case should proceed on the grounds of wider public interest in relation to the fees scheme.
There is also another case, called Williams, which was considered by the Court of Appeal in a judgment for which the neutral citation number is [2017] EWCA Civ 64. In that case the Court of Appeal, of its own motion, considered whether it should proceed with the appeal on the grounds that it had become academic. But, if I may respectfully say so, I think that their I can for present purposes summarise their Lordships' judgment as saying that the Court of Appeal regarded that case as “quite close to the line” (that is para. 15 from the judgment of Davis LJ) but, nevertheless, decided to proceed to consider the appeal, largely on the grounds, as I read the judgment, on the basis that the appeal was so far advanced that it would have been, in fact,...
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