Five Nepalese Asylum Seekers, R (on the application of) v Immigration Appeal Tribunal

On 19^th December 2003 I gave a single judgment in relation to applications made by nine Nepalese asylum-seekers who were seeking permission to appeal against the refusal of their applications for judicial review of the refusal of the Immigration Appeal Tribunal to permit them to appeal against decisions of Adjudicators who had not believed material aspects of their stories. I dismissed all their applications and said that they all represented an abuse of the process of the Court of Appeal.

Later that day I struck out of the court’s own motion seven further pending applications which displayed identical features. Each applicant was told that a hearing would be arranged for 9^th January 2004 when they might appear to show cause why their applications should not be struck out. None availed themselves of that opportunity.

Five similar applications have been listed before me today. They all have features that are identical to those displayed in the earlier nine cases (for which see [2003] EWCA(Civ) 1892). None of the appellants were present in court when the applications were called on. One of them (2386) wrote to the court yesterday and invited the court to determine the matter on the documents he had submitted. Another (2626) wrote to the court in a letter received this morning to the effect that he was unable to argue the case because he had not submitted his bundle yet. He said he had language problems and without a legal assistant. He invited the court to adjourn the application “for future”. A third (2612) wrote to the court yesterday to the effect that he was unable to attend the court because his wife was in the hospital to have a baby, and he did not have anyone to look after her. He invited the court to adjourn his case for a month, and enclosed with his letter medical reports concerning his wife. These revealed that his wife’s expected date of delivery was in ten days’ time but gave no further details about the present position.

I am willing to adjourn the hearing of his application to be refixed on the first open day on or after 19^th February. I refuse the application of 2626. There are before all the court all the documents that are needed to deal with his application fairly. In his case I have noted that he did not appear at the hearing before Beatson J on 19^th November 2003, when Beatson J dismissed his application because it disclosed no arguable ground for appealing the adjudicator’s decision. He also considered that the decision of the appeal tribunal disclosed no arguable public law ground of challenge, and said that in any event the matter was well out of time and the explanation for delay was inadequate.

I have read the papers in each of the four applications I am considering today. I do not need for the purposes of this judgment to repeat what I said in paragraphs 3 to 7 of my earlier judgment. In each of these four cases the applicant did not attend the hearing before the judge in the Administrative Court, but then proceeded to appeal against a judgment he had not been present to hear. In each case the Grounds of Appeal to this court were wholly unspecific and inadequate, and did not comply with the Practice Direction to which I referred in paragraph 6 of my earlier judgment.

It is sufficient to say that each application represents an abuse of the process of this court for the reasons I gave in that judgment, and is totally devoid of merit.

The proposed appeals have no prospect of success at all, and I therefore refuse permission to appeal in each of the four cases I have determined today.