Beckett v Secretary of State for the Home Department

The title of this action is in part what this case is about. The SSHD contends that the claimant calls himself sometimes Anthony Donovan Beckett but in reality is Everard Nathaniel Ramsay. The claimant says he is Beckett, not Ramsay. Either way, the claimant is a Jamaican national. On 10 November 2005, the SSHD served on the claimant, in the name of Beckett, a notice under s10 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, saying that he was a person liable to administrative removal because he had obtained leave to remain by deception, whether he was Ramsay or Beckett. That is challenged by judicial review, because no in-country right of appeal exists against a decision under s82(2)(g) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. On 10 February 2006, the SSHD also certified the claimant’s Article 8 ECHR claim as clearly unfounded under s94 (2) of the 2002 Act. This meant that he had no in-country appeal rights against that decision either. Permission to challenge that decision has also been granted. My conclusion on that will be affected by my conclusion as to the claimant’s true identity.

It is for the SSHD to establish, as a precedent fact to the exercise of the removal power, that the claimant did indeed obtain leave to remain by deception. The burden of proof is on her to do so; R v SSHD ex parte Khawaja [1983] UKHL 8, [1984] AC 74. The civil standard of proof applies, namely the balance of probabilities. Khawaja refers to a high degree of probability because of the gravity of an allegation of deception or criminal conduct with its attendant implications for the individual; this is nonetheless not the same as the criminal standard of proof. The language of a “high degree of probability” when applying the normal civil standard is not apt to convey what is intended. It was not intended to convey a third standard of proof lying between the other two, as what was said in paragraph 13 by Lord Fraser and in paragraph 111 by Lord Bridge makes clear. A better description of what is required in my view is given by Lord Hoffman in SSHD v Rehman [2001] UKHL 47 [2003] 1 AC 153, at paragraph 55. There are only two standards of proof. Cogent evidence is generally required to satisfy a civil tribunal that someone has been fraudulent or behaved in some other reprehensible manner. The “high probability” standard of proof is addressed to the cogency of the evidence necessary to prove the allegation. The position is the same as in a civil fraud trial, with the context affecting how gaps and uncertainties are addressed. That is what the comments of Lord Bridge in paragraph 111 are about. The parties accepted that the evidence on deception should go beyond what was before the SSHD who the s10 notice was authorised, and that although their Lordships described the function as one of review, in practice it meant that a factual judgment on all the material available to the judge was required.

I heard oral evidence from both sides about what the claimant was alleged to have done. That is unusual in a judicial review case but issues of precedent fact can require that course to be followed.

Certain facts are not now in dispute. The claimant arrived in the UK on 19 March 2001 from Jamaica and sought leave to enter using a passport issued in October 1997 in the name of Everard Nathaniel Ramsay, a wood worker born on 5 February 1961. It was not until 30 October 2007, however, the day before an earlier hearing in this matter, that the claimant admitted that that would-be entrant had in fact been him. Precisely what he had been denying and why was a matter about which he gave rather confused evidence.

The port file dealt with the refusal of leave to enter and the removal of the claimant as Everard Nathaniel Ramsay on 21 March 2001, following a short period of detention. The file contained the brief handwritten notes made on the landing card by the Immigration Officer who refused entry, the landing card signed by the claimant as Ramsay, and the typed reasons for the refusal of leave, signed off on 25 April 2001. These notes showed that the claimant had sought leave to enter as a visitor to attend the wedding of his nephew Michael Ramsay, a Jamaican visitor. Another Jamaican on the same flight also had an invitation to the same wedding, and said that he and the claimant were related, whereas the claimant denied knowing this other man. The notes do not refer to an invitation to the wedding being produced by the claimant. It can be inferred that the bride to be, as the sponsor, was spoken to at some stage by the Immigration Officer, and said that she expected those two to know each other. There were discrepancies between what she said and what the claimant said about how often he and she spoke. The claimant was unable to persuade the Immigration Officer that the letter he produced showing that he was in employment in Jamaica was reliable, or that the cost of his return ticket and the cash he had on him tallied with his claim to modest financial circumstances in Jamaica where he supported his three children. The Immigration Officer refused to accept the truth of any uncorroborated statement about the purpose and duration of stay. He made no note that he had any suspicions about the passport or whether it had been tampered with in any way. No special peculiarities were noted. The defendant’s facial mapping expert, whose report was not in the end at issue, said that the photographs in that passport and in the claimant’s later passport in the name Beckett were of the same person. The claimant agreed in evidence that it was his photograph in the Ramsay passport.

On 6 July 2001, the claimant arrived in the UK as Anthony Donovan Beckett, born on 15 July 1962. He obtained 6 months leave to enter as a visitor in that name. The incomplete handwritten notes of the interview on entry, at a time when no visa was required for a Jamaican national, mention the claimant’s “first cousin Paul Williams …[a] fireman”; that the claimant was a carpenter who lived with his girlfriend and three children; he had just come out of plaster after a bike accident 9 months before; he was coming for 2 weeks. The passport, which did not lead to any expressions of anxiety by the immigration officer nor to a second interview, noted the bearer as having as a special peculiarity - a limp in his right leg. The claimant did not leave after 2 weeks or after 6 months.

By an application dated 21 December 2001, the claimant as Beckett applied for leave to remain as a student, which was granted in April 2002 until January 2003. The question at 1.5 of the application form read: “Name at birth if different, and any other names by which you have been known”. The claimant drew a line through the space left for answer. I regard that as a clear equivalent to a positive answer that there no such names. The contrary was not argued. He signed the declaration at the end of the form which included the words: “The information I have given is complete and is true to the best of my knowledge.” He also declared that he was aware that it was an offence under the Immigration Act 1971, as amended, to make to a person acting in execution of the Act a statement or representation which the maker knew to be false or did not believe to be true, “or to obtain or to seek to obtain leave to remain in the United Kingdom by means which include deception.” The SSHD relied on that declaration.

Mr Richmond, a Chief Immigration Officer, was questioned about the significance of the answers or rather the absence of answer which the claimant had given to the question about his name at birth and whether he had ever been known by any other name. The immigration authorities would be very interested in the use of any other name, he said, and he pointed out that the declaration signed on the form stressed the importance of the whole truth being told. The use of another identity or a false one would definitely be material to the grant of leave, as it would go to the very identity of the person, which was very important to immigration officers. The question was asked to establish if the person had ever used another name, which was critical information. The immigration authorities would interpret the question as including the question of whether any application had been made by that person in another name. In a marriage application, the true identity could show that other requirements of the Rules were not met.

In November 2002, the claimant as Beckett married a UK national, J G, 30 years old with three children and living on benefits. I use initials for her and her children because of the evidence given about them. On 5 December 2002, the claimant as Beckett applied for leave to remain on the basis of that marriage. According to the application form, they had met a few months previously, decided to marry in September and started living together on 22 November 2002. The same question at 1.5 of the form was dealt with by a line in the box for answers; the same declaration as for the application for leave to remain as a student was signed by the claimant and a similar one by his wife. The SSHD relied on that declaration as well. Leave to remain was granted in July 2003, for one year until 18 July 2004.

On 17 July 2004, by a form dated 13 May 2004, the claimant as Beckett made an application for indefinite leave to remain on the basis of his marriage. The same question as before was asked and as on the previous occasions was dealt with by a line in the box for answers; the same declarations as before were made. The SSHD also relied on that declaration. The claimant and his wife were interviewed. ILR was granted on 18 October 2004.

At the interview, the claimant said that he had met his wife while crossing the park going to “his brother”. He said later in interview that the witnesses at the wedding had been his cousin and his brother’s wife. When asked specifically for their names, the claimant said “Paul Williams and Natalie Ramsay”. His wife said that they had been “Natalie Ramsay and Paul Williams;” and that Natalie was her sister in law, Anthony’s brother’s wife, and Paul was his first cousin. So they were saying the same thing. It is a curious feature of the two later applications that the gender of two of Mrs Beckett’s three children is given incorrectly on forms which she has signed. There was some cross-examination about that but it is clear that there was an error by whoever filled it in, and that is referred to on the interview notes. The solicitor had filled in the second form and may have copied the errors from the form in which the errors had first appeared. The case worker noted the error.

On 7 June 2005, the claimant was arrested while living with his wife at 58 Pelham Road, Wood Green. They had been living there since about May 2004. He was arrested by the Operation Trident team of the Metropolitan Police on charges of possession of a firearm, and possession of crack cocaine with intent to supply. He was acquitted after a trial on 10 November 2005. He was then immediately detained under immigration powers on the grounds that he had obtained leave to remain by deception and that his removal was imminent. He was interviewed on tape, under caution, in the presence of a representative from his current solicitors, and was served with the Decision Notice under s10 of the 1999 Act, which is the principal subject of these proceedings.

The formal record of the decision-making process, which Ms Baruah for the Mr Beckett, quite wrongly, was bold enough to say at one point, had not been produced, recorded what happened and why the decision to remove the claimant had been made. The “aliases” of Legs Diamond and Everard Anthony Ramsay were noted. His passport was held: “Port File”. The Immigration Officer said that intelligence received from Operation Trident, together with the evidence of a facial mapping expert and a hand writing comparison had led him to be satisfied to a high degree of probability that the person who used the Ramsay identity on March 2001 had been the same as had used the Beckett identity in July 2001. He had withheld his identity and immigration history and had therefore obtained leave by deception, although the claimant denied it. The claimant made no comment to any question and so the Immigration Officers had no knowledge of any mitigating personal circumstances. It noted his walking difficulties. There are then a number of comments about what was proved at trial and about admissions which the claimant was said to have made about gang activities. The true identity was said to be Everard Nathaniel Ramsay, whose street name was “Legs Diamond”. He had obtained ILR by sophisticated deception and should remain detained pending removal.

On 28 November 2005, he was granted immigration bail, with a condition that he had to live and sleep at an address in Finsbury Park, which a friend allowed him to use. He was also given a few days grace to hand over his passport to Immigration Officers.

On 5 December 2005, the claimant’s solicitors wrote to the SSHD saying that the SSHD had produced no evidence to substantiate his claims that Beckett was the Ramsay who had failed in his attempt to enter in March 2001. “Our client denies the allegation and maintains that he is not Everard Nathaniel Ramsay”. In a short paragraph, contending that his removal would be a breach of his human rights, it was asserted that he had a thriving business as a [music] Promoter. The word “family” was mentioned but no more was said about any family. The rest of the letter was concerned with the SSHD’s evidence that Ramsay was Beckett. Judicial review was threatened. It was commenced on 12 December 2005. Its principal concern was that the claimant should not be deported while his challenge to proceedings involving the forfeiture of £15000 cash found at 58 Pelham Road remained unresolved. He stayed while they were concluded; the money was forfeit in March 2006 under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. No point of significance was then made in relation to Article 8 ECHR in those proceedings.

After service of the Article 8 decision of 10 February 2006, in which the Ramsay and Beckett identities were again both said to be the claimant’s, and after service of the facial mapping and handwriting experts’ reports on 13 February 2006, permission to apply for judicial review was granted on 22 March 2006 only on the ground that the SSHD had to prove that the claimant had obtained leave to remain by deception. The Article 8 ground, such as it was, was refused.

The claimant prevaricated after that about whether he was or was not the Ramsay who had tried to enter in March 2001. The claimant’s solicitors initially said that they wanted their experts to examine the material relied on by the SSHD’s experts, and were indeed doing so. They were chased for updates. Eventually it was agreed that the claimant should have until 15 June 2006 to file any further evidence, lay or expert. Nothing was filed despite six chasing letters between June and September 2006. On 19 September the claimant’s solicitors said that they were not filing expert evidence, but would rely on lay witnesses to be forwarded in due course. The defendant’s detailed grounds of defence, filed on 5 July 2007, detailed the passage of events. The case was due for hearing before Sir Michael Harrison on 1 November 2007. On 31 October 2007, the claimant produced his first statement in these proceedings, begun as long ago as December 2005, and as at 1 November 2007, that was the only statement produced on his behalf. In it he admitted, with little detail by way of explanation but with some documents to support the Beckett identity, that he had tried to enter the UK in March 2001 as Everard Nathaniel Ramsay. The proceedings were adjourned. He was ordered to pay the costs of the adjournment. It was agreed that the claimant should have leave to pursue the Article 8 ground previously refused.

On 10 April 2008, before Holman J, the proceedings were again adjourned, this time because of the late service by the defendant of some of her evidence. There was some squabbling between the two advocates before me as to what was said at that hearing about why the defendant was unwilling to disclose to the claimant the addresses of two women, to whom I shall come, whether because of fear or of some other reasons. Fear was an issue referred to by the judge. Ms Baruah said that it was raised by Ms Chan who had said that the two women were too frightened to come to court; Ms Chan said that it was raised by the judge and not her since her concern had been that protected personal data should not be released without a court order; she may have referred to a possible unwillingness of the women to attend because the two had broken off contact with the claimant.

Holman J gave directions that the claimant file a “full statement by himself in answer to [certain] statements served by the Defendant” which dealt in particular with his relations with two women whom the SSHD said knew him as Everard Nathaniel Ramsay and as the father of one of each of their children. Leave to serve a statement by his wife was given and her first statement in these proceedings was served dated 29 April 2008. The SSHD was given directions to find the Beckett passport, which it was said she had had and had lost, (or at any rate could not find in circumstances in which she probably had been given it to keep for her purposes). Questions were to be agreed between the parties and put to the relevant Jamaican authorities about the passports and identity. The claimant, it was noted, also refused to give another specimen of DNA, having already given one for the criminal proceedings which had been lost. One direction noted that some of the evidence which the SSHD wished to call would be hearsay and that the claimant’s objection to it would be dealt at this hearing. At a further directions hearing before Cranston J on 13 June 2008, which added to some of the earlier directions, skeleton arguments from both sides were ordered. I shall have to return to those directions later.

Mr Richmond, produced the immigration records to which I have referred, in his statement of 2 April 2008, and said that those who created them could not reasonably be expected to have any recollection of the matters recorded. He had not gone back to those whose names could be identified to see if that was in fact so, including the Immigration Officers who had interviewed the claimant on 10 November 2005. He also produced a report of an interview with Stephanie Napier, one of the two women whose addresses the claimant had unsuccessfully sought from the SSHD. She was not called, and although Ms Baruah made submissions about the weight which I should attach to it, there was no objection to its admissibility as hearsay. That was the same stance as she adopted in relation to all the hearsay evidence.

Ms Napier, a Jamaican national, was interviewed by Immigration Officers on 7 June 2005 at Hornsey police station after her arrest as a possible overstayer. The purpose of an Immigration Officer being there was to record any mitigating circumstances which the subject might tell the Immigration Officer about, which might weigh against removal. She had arrived in the UK in 2000 and should have left in 2001. She was interviewed under caution, in the presence of her solicitor and the interview was taped. This interview was held on the day the claimant was arrested on the firearms and drug offences. She had been living at 58 Pelham Road for about a year by June 2005. 58 Pelham Road is where he had been living with his wife for about a year, is where he was arrested and where the £15000 cash, later forfeited, was found. Ms Napier had had three children but only the youngest was born in the UK and lived with her. This child was about 18 months old. She was called S Ramsay; it is not necessary to spell out her full names. Another older child of hers had the same surname, Ramsay. Her current partner with whom she lived was Anthony Beckett. She was served with a s10 notice, but given temporary release because of the young child. The immigration interview record could have been compiled from notes which were not now available; it was signed the day after the interview. Mr Richmond did not believe that Ms Napier had been asked to come to court or if she was willing to come to court, although he believed her still to be in the UK.

Mr Andrews, then an Immigration Officer attached to the Operation Trident team and now a CIO, had searched 58 Pelham Road after the claimant’s arrest and found there the typed birth certificate for S Ramsay. He had found the £15000 cash in one of the bedrooms at 58 Pelham Road but he could not remember whether it was in the single or the double. The claimant had said that it came from his nightclub business.

Another Immigration Officer, Mr Church, produced the original birth certificate for S Ramsay from Hackney Registry Office. The girl was born in October 2003. The father was named as Everard Nathaniel Ramsay, a Jamaican national and a carpenter. The form was signed by the father as E Ramsay. Those statements were dated 1 and 2 April 2008.

Mr Church gave evidence that on 26 March 2008, in the morning, he attended the Becket House reporting centre in London, where a Ms Barbara Weir had reported as required. Ms Weir is a Jamaican national born in 1964, who entered the UK in December 2001 with leave to remain for 6 months; her application in 2007 for ILR was rejected as was her application for leave to remain outside the rules. Her solicitors withdrew her appeals in February 2008. She was detained and taken to her home in Ilford for it to be searched later that morning for her identity and travel documents. There, Mr Church found a photograph of a black man holding a baby. On the back was written “To Sandra [new line] Leg and his British Son”. She told Mr Church that that was a photograph of “my baby and his dad Everard Ramsay”. Another photograph of the same man holding the baby was found. Ms Weir said that that was “my baby and his father, Everard Ramsay, again”. She signed the search record as recording what she had said correctly.

Mr Church produced the typed and original birth certificates for this baby, born on 19 August 2002 in Harold Wood. He was called Everard [C] Ramsay. The father was Everard Nathaniel Ramsay, a student, from Jamaica. He had signed the certificate.

Detective Sergeant Sweeney of the Operation Trident team interviewed her with an Immigration Officer at the police station later that day, on tape under caution and with her solicitor present. His statement was dated 1 April 2008.

During the interview, Ms Weir was asked questions about the baby in the photographs, so as to establish her identity and issues which might arise on removal, according to DS Sweeney. The transcript of the interview recorded her as agreeing that Everard Nathaniel Ramsay, the man in the photograph was the father; she had conceived the child in the UK, where she had first met him. She did not know him by any other names or nicknames. She had not stayed in a relationship with him nor did he support the child. She confirmed that the photographs were of the father, Everard Nathaniel Ramsay, with his child. Sandra, she said, was a friend from home. She was asked whether “Leg” referred to the male whom DS Sweeney said the police knew as “Legs Diamond”, but her answer was “I don’t know any kind inaudible”. She did query why she was being asked these questions and whether there were two investigations or just the one about a false National Insurance card. DS Sweeney told her that he was going through her background to check that she agreed what the Immigration Officers were saying. He repeated in court that that is what he had been doing; the questions were not specific to any offence and he did not know what she might be charged with as a foreign national. DS Sweeney was pretty sure that he had spoken to her after the interview about Everard Ramsay, although he had not said in the interview that he was interested in an immigration case about him. Ms Weir was also asked in interview about the signature of Paul Williams on her driving licence application; he had given his address as Euston fire station. He was, she said, a cousin, a part of the family.

She was charged the next day with obtaining a pecuniary advantage of some £70000 by deception in her 3 years work at a bakery on false NI card. She was kept in custody for her appearance in the Magistrates’ Court on 28 March 2008. She is awaiting trial at the end of 2008.

DS Sweeney added in his statement that Ramsay, the man in the photograph, was known to use the alias Beckett. The claimant later admitted in his third statement that those were photographs of him. This statement said nothing about the coincidence of the name Everard Nathaniel Ramsay being used or how he knew Ms Weir. His wife said that she knew that he had no child outside their marriage. She had never heard of Ms Weir until this trial.

Mr Richmond agreed in cross-examination that he had authorised the search of Ms Weir’s residence, at which the photographs of the claimant holding the baby had been found, as his signature on the record form showed. Ms Weir was on temporary reporting or temporary admission on bail at the time. The search had been for documentation to confirm her identity and thus to establish it for the purposes of obtaining Emergency Travel Documentation. It was not sufficient to believe that she was telling the truth for that purpose. That was how the search came within the powers of Schedule 2 paragraph 25A (2), (7) and (9) to the Immigration Act 1971. He also agreed that removing the photographs of the baby did not come within that power, but they did come within s17 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants) Act 2004. He was not in a position to deny that the police may have known of a connection between Ms Weir and the claimant; the police worked closely with immigration, and as the Immigration Officer team was not prosecution trained, the police had an interest in Ms Weir for immigration or national insurance offences.

He had not spoken to Ms Weir, nor had anyone else so far as he knew, asking her to come to Court. The view had been taken that people under investigation for other matters should not be called to give evidence. DS Sweeney had spoken to her at the PCMH, asking her if she was going to be giving evidence in this case, but she had told him that she knew nothing of it, and did not want to be involved. She had not said anything specific about being afraid.

Mr Church gave further evidence of how this had come about. He had been investigating Ms Weir who was on temporary release. She had provided no passport for herself or documentation necessary for her removal with her child but said her passport was at her house. They already suspected that Ms Weir had had a child with the claimant, as Ramsay. But they were searching for any documents relating to the identity of Ms Weir and her child. They took the documents to try to identify the parentage of the child, to see if he was liable to removal and to obtain Emergency Travel Documents for him. He identified the powers under which the search was initiated and the documents seized, as Mr Richmond had done. But despite repeated questioning he was unable to say specifically what it was that s17 actually empowered. He thought that the documents could be seized for the purposes of Ms Weir’s and the child’s identity. Although when the photographs were seized it was clear that Ramsay was the man in them, he denied that the search had simply been about Ramsay/ Beckett; he insisted that it had been about the identity of Ms Weir and the child. He had never spoken to Ms Weir about her giving evidence; that was not a matter for him.

The evidence of two experts was read. The first, Ms Reboul, of Forensic Science Service Ltd, gave handwriting evidence in a report dated May 2008 about the signatures “E Ramsay”. She took as her reference signatures those on the Everard Ramsay passport used in March 2001 and on the landing card used in March 2001. She only had a photocopy of the passport signature. She compared those with the signatures on the two photocopy birth certificates. She recognised the limitation which working from a photocopy imposed, and that only the two block capital letters on the passport could be compared to the signatures in block capitals on the birth certificates. The rest of the signature was in lower case on the passport but in block letters on the birth certificates. Nonetheless, she concluded that there were distinctive similarities. She could not exclude completely the possibility that one or both of the signatures on the birth certificates were simulations of the block letters in the passport signature, but the similarities provided “moderate support” for the proposition that the birth certificate signatures were genuine signatures written by the Everard Ramsay who signed the passport. “Moderate support” on her scale is only one up from “Inconclusive”, below “Strong”, “Very Strong” and “Conclusive”.

Ms Denton, also of FSS Ltd, in a report of June 2008, gave DNA evidence directed to testing whether there was any scientific support for the proposition that the claimant and Michael Ramsey were brothers or half brothers. For this she used samples obtained from both of them, to which I shall return. A “likelihood ratio” or “sibship” index was used for the purposes of this comparison, which drew on UK population data. She concluded that the tests showed that it was approximately 4 times more likely that the two were related as full siblings than that they were unrelated; and that it was 23 times more likely that the two were related as half brothers than unrelated. There was no separate evaluation of the possibility that the two were closely related in some other way.

Although Ms Baruah objected to the admissibility of the conclusions which Ms Denton then drew, she realised that their omission could lead to misunderstandings of the significance of the statistical evidence. The results supported the assertion that the two were related rather than unrelated, provided “limited support” for the view that they were related as full siblings, and “moderate support” for the view that they were related as half brothers. Ms Denton’s scale of evaluation uses four grades of strength above those applied here. “Limited support” is only one above “no support”.

DS Sweeney was asked about the way in which the DNA used in this test had been obtained. The DNA which the police had previously obtained from the claimant in the course of the criminal proceedings had been lost, and at the directions hearing before Holman J, the claimant made clear that he refused to supply any further sample. He said in evidence to me that he was concerned that the police would use it, in some way he could not specify, to “stitch him up” as they had tried to do in the criminal proceedings. He had not realised at the time that the police had lost the sample, although that is what counsel for the SSHD stated in open court, and thought that they still had it in their database. DS Sweeney denied that the police had raided the claimant’s home, on 12 May 2008, a month later, in order to provide a pretext for taking another sample of his DNA. They had hoped to start criminal proceedings against him; they were aware that he had obtained a second provisional driving licence from the DVLA and PNC, and intended to arrest him over the first one because it was in the false Becket identity, and hoped to do the same with the second, which they found as expected. Once the claimant had been arrested, his DNA was taken as a matter of routine. When taking it, its possible use in a comparison was part of the motive.

DS Sweeney agreed that one of the two Beckett driving licences had been obtained from the claimant on his arrest in 2005, and that there had been no charges yet brought in respect of either, though that remained a possibility. The claimant said that he had got the second provisional driving licence because the first had been taken from him on arrest in June 2005, had not been returned after his acquittal and he needed one to drive because he could not walk properly. DS Sweeney also agreed that no consent had been obtained from Michael Ramsey for the use of his DNA, which had also been obtained when he had been arrested for another matter. He was not sure how all this fitted in with the Data Protection Act 1998, about which Ms Baruah thought it could be profitable to question him, and without alerting him to the legal knowledge she expected him to have.

Mr Richmond said that he would be very surprised that, if the missing Beckett passport had been found by the authorities earlier, it had not been retained at an earlier stage than an immigration bail hearing, and a receipt had not been given at any stage at which it had been retained. He accepted however that the record of the grant of immigration bail required the passport to be surrendered.

Mr Richmond also gave evidence about the various steps which he and others had taken, pursuant to the direction of the High Court that the SSHD use her best endeavours to find the Beckett passport of the claimant. These had been unsuccessful. He also produced the joint list of question about the Ramsay and Beckett passports, which the Court had directed be asked of the Jamaican passport authorities: the supporting material which was provided to obtain them, the checks carried out before issue, and the ease with which false documents could be obtained. The list was sent on 23 May 2008, and a supplementary letter was sent on 18 June 2008, with a reminder about the time scale of the hearing. No answer was received. No special contacts had been used. DS Sweeney had not been involved either in formulating the questions nor had he been asked to use any special contacts he had in Jamaica. DS Sweeney was of the view that that would not have helped anyway: questions of that sort would always have to go through the proper liaison channels, as these had done.

The SSHD produced evidence about the documentary material which the claimant had provided in support of his claim to be Anthony Beckett. The claimant produced in 2007 two versions of a birth certificate in the name of Beckett. He also produced a Jamaican driving licence in the Beckett name, issued in May 2001, which was found in the search following his arrest in June 2005. He also had two provisional UK driving licences in the Beckett name, one issued in 2004 found on his arrest, and a replacement issued in 2006. All three licences showed photographs of the claimant.

DS Sweeney, who had spent 6 months in Jamaica on secondment to work with the Jamaican Constabulary Force and the Jamaican Defence Force, said that he had established during that time some of the ways in which Jamaican criminals would enter the UK illegally. The most popular way would be for a person, once removed from the UK in his true identity, to get a cloned identity either from a dead person or from someone who was prepared to sell them their identity. This would provide a birth certificate, which in turn would enable a passport and a Jamaican driving licence to be obtained. This would then all be used to enter the UK in a false identity and to re-establish himself. DS Sweeney had set up a unit to deal with such frauds when he returned to the UK in April 2005. He had first become aware of Ramsay/Beckett in Jamaica in 2004/5, but had not been involved in the prosecution in 2005. Since July 2006, he had been involved in the arrest and prosecution of over 12 Jamaican nationals who had re-entered the UK by deception.

Mr Richmond produced a Country of Origin Information Request Answer to a question asked urgently in March 2008, and answered the next day. It asked how easy it was for someone to obtain forged Jamaican birth certificates and forms, and a driving licence or whether it was possible to obtain such documents by using someone else’s identity. The reply cited news sources from 2002, 2005 and 2008. The use of false documentation by criminals was noted. The paper now used for birth certificates was security paper. But copy birth documentation could be obtained with the birth registration or entry number and if that was not known, a search of the records for the entry number could be made electronically, failing which trained Registry staff would have to search the records. There was evidence of corrupt practices in the obtaining of

Mr Richmond had made contact with Denham Town Primary school in Kingston because the claimant had produced a note of particulars entitled “School Admission Record” but in fact extracted on 26 October 2007 from the actual school admission records. The name and birth dates accorded with those on the Beckett passport, and the mother’s name with the name on the birth certificate in the Beckett name. Beckett had been admitted to the school in September 1971. DS Sweeney telephoned the school in April 2008, and spoke to one of the school’s Deputy Principals about how such records could be obtained. They had records going back to 1971; the one at issue here related to a period long before her time at the school. It took about 3 or 4 days from request for such a record to be provided and only four people could sign them. She said that people might approach them saying that they were relatives, but they were never asked for any form of identification. Most of the time the requests were not by the former pupil; he might be abroad. There was no charge for this service. DS Sweeney made his verbatim notes of the essential parts of the call a few minutes, and less than an hour, afterwards. He had not asked whether anyone else had made a request for the identity, nor if the school had any photographs of Beckett or if there were any relatives on their records.

The claimant’s written evidence was quite short, notwithstanding the way his case was to evolve. His oral evidence in chief was more elaborate.

In his first statement dated 31 October 2007, he confirmed for the first time that he had used the name Everard Nathaniel Ramsay in an unsuccessful attempt to enter the UK in 2001. He said that was not his real name and he had never been known by that name. He used this name because “I was fleeing persecution from non-state agents in my country who wanted to take my life. I had used this name in order to escape detection.” This was not his natural way of speaking nor were those non-state agents particularised. The threat, whatever it was, ceased after he was returned and, after he had spent some time in the countryside, he returned to Kingston and then to the UK in his real name, Beckett. The substance of the point was dealt with in 4 short paragraphs. He asked for his UK driving licence back and produced a copy of his birth certificate, typed and handwritten. No father was named; his mother was Viola Prince. In oral evidence in chief, he said that he did not know who his own father was, and although he knew Michael Ramsey because they had grown up in the same area, the explanation he gave for the name Ramsay being in the passport he used in March 2001 was that a group in Jamaica had just given him one with that name in it.

He gave further evidence about his identity in cross-examination. He had been born in Fourth Street, Denham Town, in Kingston. His mother had died 10-12 years ago in her 60s. He had gone to Denham Town Primary School from the age of about 6. This was the only school he went to. When it was pointed out to him that the School Record showed that he had started there aged 9, he then said that 9 was right, and he could not quite remember the exact age. That he “could not quite remember” became something of a refrain during his evidence. He stopped going to school because of “the war” which stopped him getting to “the other side”; school finished at about 12-13 years not 10-11.

He returned on a number of occasions in his evidence to how the name Everard Nathaniel Ramsay came to be on the passport he first used. The name was on the passport which he got from a group in his area at that time. He had not investigated that since it was 7 years ago; “No one could ask”. He did not know how the name was obtained, and he did not know if it was a false passport. He repeated that he had been fleeing for his life at the time, because of a politics war and killings; he had to “run out of the community and go uptown”. Someone was just helping him as he did not have a passport, so he took the opportunity to run. He did not know that he could say that he was Anthony Beckett, say that he was fleeing for his life and ask for protection in the UK. He agreed that he had never made an asylum claim in the whole period he had been here: he did not know about seeking asylum.

The claimant explained how the interview had gone on his arrival in March 2001 as Ramsay. He told the Immigration Officer that he was here to attend the wedding of his brother, Michael Ramsey. (The notes say “nephew”). “Brother” he explained to the court was just a common way of referring to someone, whether blood related or not. He just happened to have the name Ramsay on the passport; it was just something he got to run with. When he had been returned to Jamaica he had given the Ramsay passport back to the group which obtained it for him in the first place. There was a real wedding between Michael Ramsey and Natalie Miller, but that was not his purpose in coming; he was fleeing for his life. Then, as if to explain this coincidence, he said that he was both fleeing for his life and coming to the wedding.

He returned to this first passport in re-examination. He did not know if there was a real Everard Nathaniel Ramsay. He then said quite clearly and for the first time that when he got the passport in the Ramsay name, he told them about the wedding, but he did not tell them the names of the people getting married. The names were on the invitation. This raised the obvious question about how those names had got there. “Q And you gave them the letter?" asked Ms Baruah “A I gave them the invitation”. I pointed out that this was a leading question on what could be a very important point and that I would disregard that answer. But it was clear that the claimant thought that this had been a helpful answer and he incorporated it into later answers. In response to further questions in re-examination, he said that he was fleeing and they said that they could help him to get out and would get him a passport. He showed them the invitation letter and gave them money but he could not remember how much. “I realised by talking that someone had sent the invitation letter to get me in. I passed it to them to let them know what I was going to. When I said I had no passport, they said that they could get me one in that same name.” This was not in his statement, he explained, because he had not been asked these questions before.

I asked him about this. He said that he had had the invitation to show the Immigration Officer, because that would show the same name as in the passport. He thought that the invitation said “Everard Nathaniel Ramsay or the like”. I asked how that name had got on to the invitation in the first place. He thought for a bit and then said that he had been sent a letter with the name Ramsay which he showed to the people who were providing the passport, they had then produced the passport in the name Everard Nathaniel Ramsay, he had then written to Natalie giving her that full name as the name to be put on his invitation, and she had then written back to him with the invitation in that name so that he could show it to the Immigration Officer matching the name in the passport. He then confirmed that that was how it had come about.

When he wanted to come back to the UK, he went to the passport office and obtained the passport in his real name of Beckett. Everything had become peaceful again once he got back to Jamaica, or two weeks or two months later, as he variously put it. He no longer had to hide and was no longer at risk going to the passport office. It was also a shorter journey and it was the journey there which he had feared in March 2001. He showed them the handwritten birth certificate which he had found in his documents when his mother died. He had needed a counter-signatory from the local area to say that he knew the claimant as Beckett; this man occupied a position in the community as the man who signed documents and verified identities. The claimant did not know this man’s surname, although the claimant had worked with his son. He had produced also a letter from his GP. He had not got the typed version of his birth certificate until he was in England; he could not quite remember how.

In order to get the Jamaican driving licence, issued in May 2001, he had had to take his birth certificate, and pass a test. He had had to show his Beckett passport as a further form of identity. In order to get his first DVLA provisional licence he had used his hand written birth certificate and proof of address.

The claimant had not admitted that it was him using the passport in March 2001 until 31 October 2007, because “I didn’t think it relevant,” and he had remained of that view even after he was served with the s10 notice in November 2005. He did not know why people were asking him about that name. At his interview on 10 November 2005, he had been shown two dark photographs and was asked which one was him, and he had replied that he knew nothing. He did not remember being asked whether he had come in as Everard Ramsay, but agreed that he had answered “no comment” to questions. He agreed that the solicitor’s letter of 5 December 2005, denying that he was Ramsay, had been written on his instructions; he claimed not to have understood that the SSHD was alleging that he had entered as Everard Nathaniel Ramsay; he was just denying that he was in fact Everard Nathaniel Ramsay. Once he got a clear photograph, which he did with the facial mapping report, he had realised that it was him using the Ramsay passport. He had not wanted to say anything that was not “relevant” and he feared being “messed up” as had happened over his criminal case. At first he said that he had probably forgotten that he had tried to enter in March 2001, and denied that he knew that full well; he had forgotten that he was trying to enter and that he was trying to do so as Ramsay; he then told me that he had to forgotten that he was fleeing for his life or the wedding and said that he had not forgotten that he had tried to come in in March 2001, just that Everard Nathaniel Ramsay was the name he had used. He then added that he had not realised that the allegation was that he had tried to come in as Everard Nathaniel Ramsay until after his release on bail after his trial.

A month after his first statement, he produced another short statement, this time dealing with his marriage, and his claim that the certification decision was erroneous in law. He said in total: “I can confirm that I am still married to my wife and our marriage is still subsisting. Since my arrival in the United kingdom in 2002, I have established private and family life in the United Kingdom.” That was it, except for the fact that he had just had an operation and was walking with crutches. He confirmed that had provided his birth certificates, and a school report in November 2007 and said that the original of his driving licence was available for inspection as it was in the possession of the police.

In his third statement, of 30^th April 2008, the claimant dealt with notable brevity with Ms Napier, despite the direction of Holman J. The claimant denied that he was the father of this child or that he had ever had any relationship with Ms Napier. He had not known Ms Napier before he moved into 58 Pelham Road. He added in chief a little about Ms Napier. He knew “for real” that he was not the father of Ms Napier’s child, but did not know who the father was, and had no explanation for how the name Everard Nathaniel Ramsay had appeared on the birth certificate.

Ms Napier also featured some more in the cross-examination. The claimant was unable to remember the exact date he moved into 58 Pelham Road where she was already living. He accepted that it was probably in 2004. He could not explain how Ms Napier had come to say in her s10 interview that her current partner was Anthony Beckett when he had never been in a romantic relationship with her. He and his wife shared some accommodation with Ms Napier, but they had the double bedroom; his wife’s baby now aged 5-6 had lived with them, but not at that time her two older daughters. The older two, who were in their teens, lived with the father’s mother, “something like that”.

He now said that he had indeed known her before he moved into 58 Pelham Road with his wife; he had seen her hanging around North London. He had got to know her shortly after he came to London. His wife said that she had not known of that earlier acquaintance but was sure that nothing was going on between her husband and Ms Napier; the two just used to chat and her own relations with her husband were fine at the time. It was the claimant according to Mrs Beckett who had found the place at 58 Pelham Road to live in, and had told her that he had not known Ms Napier before they moved in. Neither had ever asked her about the father of the child; although Mrs Beckett said that she had got to know her quite well, it was none of her business to ask who the father of her child was. Mrs Beckett said that they lived there for about a year from May/June 2004. Neither of them came across anyone called Everard Ramsay at that address, nor any man friend. Ms Napier had never told them that the child’s father’s name was Everard Nathaniel Ramsay.

The claimant asserted that he would never have discussed the fact that he had come to the UK as Everard Nathaniel Ramsay with her; he would never discuss his business with “no one like that.” And he had no idea how the name Everard Nathaniel Ramsay came to be on Ms Napier’s child’s birth certificate, seized from the flat; he had not signed it. The claimant had had no further contact with her after he left 58 Pelham Road upon his arrest in June 2005. He just did not see her around any more, and did not know where she was. He had wanted her address from the SSHD because he had thought that she could help, although not on the question of his identity because she knew nothing about that. Mrs Beckett had had no contact with Ms Napier after they had left Pelham Road.

His third statement also dealt with Ms Weir and the photographs with notable brevity, despite the direction of Holman J; he added quite a lot in chief. He had originally met Ms Weir at a party and had last spoken to her a couple of years ago, when he had seen her at a bus garage in Dagenham and had pulled over in his car to speak to her. She had told him that she had a baby, at which he had expressed some surprise and she had said that he could come and see him. He went in to her flat and played with the baby and that was when she had taken the photographs of him with the baby. He left after a little while and had not seen her since. He knew nothing about the comments on the back: people used to call him “Legs Diamond”, because of his party promotion business but not “Legs”. (I noted “Legs” but it could well have been “Leg”). This was the business in which he had earned the £15000 found at 58 Pelham Road, which he forfeited under the Proceeds of Crime Act after his acquittal; it had not been taxed. In re-examination he said that he did not know why he had the nickname, but it was not to do with his disability. He told me that he was not usually called “Legs” by itself.

The claimant was asked more about this in cross-examination. This meeting had occurred a long time ago and he had not seen her since, and did not know her address. He had no knowledge of the baby’s name; it had not been “his duty”; he had not asked the baby’s name because he had not thought to do so, nor did he know its age. He had not thought to ask who the father was; it would have been none of his business. He could not explain why she had written what she had written on the photograph, and he did not recognise the writing. He had never mentioned the name Everard Nathaniel Ramsay, the name on the birth certificate, to Ms Weir. Only she could explain how that name had come to be there. It was just a coincidence, as it was with Ms Napier’s child’s birth certificate, that the name Everard Nathaniel Ramsay was on it, as he had never mentioned that name to anyone in the UK. They were not his signatures and he did not know whose they might have been. He did not have the sort of relationship with Ms Weir which would have meant they kept in touch.

The claimant had never bumped into Everard Nathaniel Ramsay, and most Caribbean people, he said, did not give their surnames on purpose; it was just cultural.

DS Sweeney had said in his statement that intelligence suggested the claimant had a younger brother in the UK called Michael Ramsey, also known to the police. The claimant said of Michael Ramsey that he knew him as they had grown up in the same area, that he had originally known him only as Michael but explained that, although he would refer to Michael as his brother, they were not related by blood. Calling people “brother” was a part of Caribbean culture just as close friends would be referred to as brothers or some other word which implied a blood relationship; older friends could be called dad or mum. So Michael’s wife would be called his brother’s wife, since she was married to a childhood friend; that was the explanation for the answers given about their relationship to the witnesses at his wedding to Mrs Beckett.

The claimant described it as amazing that he and Michael Ramsey might be half brothers. His mother had not told him that, and he thought that they might be “quarter brothers”, because they were so close. He did not recollect his mother being pregnant, Michael being younger than him. He had no full brothers or sisters but had thought years ago that Michael Ramsey was a cousin. He did not know Michael Ramsey’s parents’ names nor where they lived nor whether he had any brothers or sisters.

Mrs Beckett provided a short statement dated 29 April 2008. She had met the claimant in a park, and had been in a relationship with him for 6 months before they got married on 22 November 2002. They had lived together first after marriage at her father’s house in Dagenham, before moving to 58 Pelham Road. (In cross-examination, she said that they had lived elsewhere for a month before moving into her father’s house; the claimant had also said that in his oral evidence.). After the claimant’s arrest, the statement continued, she had moved into a hostel and she was still there when the claimant was granted immigration bail, so he could not be released to reside there with her. She now lived in a house in Romford. He lived in a flat in Haringey, but they still saw each other every day and he spent more time at her house. The claimant has and “still plays the father role in the life of my daughters who love him so much and to whom he also shows affection”. The way her evidence about that developed was interesting.

In oral evidence in chief, the claimant commented on this statement and elaborated on their relationship in view of the fact that he had been bailed in November 2005 to Flat 14 Malden Court in Finsbury Park, and had never since resided with his wife. When he was bailed, she was in a hostel and so he could not go there. He would see her instead two or three times a week. He had never thought of applying to vary his bail address and his solicitors had never advised him that he could do that, even though his wife had moved to a house.

The claimant had more to say in cross-examination. When the two had got married, they had left where they had started living to go to her father’s house in Dagenham. He needed looking after because he was ill but the claimant could not quite remember what with. They were unable to buy somewhere until after that house had been sold, and so they moved out to 58 Pelham Road so that the father’s house could be sold. Once he was arrested, she could not afford the rent and had had to move to a hostel, before he was released from prison. The landlord said that he would put his things in storage while he was in prison. He could not say when the tenancy in fact ended.

He had ended up in Malden Court in November 2005 because he had known the girl, whose two bedroomed flat it was, long before he went to prison and he had just asked if he could be bailed to that address. She let him stay there as a favour. He paid no rent, and just slept on a settee sometimes. The girl lived there as well. There was no room for him and his wife to live there. She had never visited him there. His wife’s evidence was the same. She knew his friend Tracy, whose flat it was.

His wife had lived in the hostel in Ilford with her youngest daughter, after his arrest when she had had to leave 58 Pelham Road. He also could not quite recall where his wife was living when he left custody. He had visited her once or twice at the hostel, meeting her nearby but he had never been in to the hostel. Mrs Beckett agreed that that was so. He did not know if it was a women only hostel or a family hostel. He had been waiting for a better home, and she had said that it was not proper accommodation. His wife had then moved into an address in Hornchurch; he could not remember when or the address but said that he could describe how to get there. He had only driven there, he had never lived there. He could not remember how long she had lived there. It was a temporary address. All three of her children had lived there with her in the three bedroom council house. It had a white door with flowers in coloured glass. His wife said in chief that she had lived there for two and a half years, and described the door in the same way in cross-examination.

Then “sometime” this year, January said his wife, she had moved to Romford. This was a 3 bed-roomed house where all of his wife’s three children lived. It had a white door and a big garden. She said that it had a brown front door. He had never stayed the night with her because he was scared to sleep away from the accommodation at which the bail conditions required him to sleep and reside. He had not been on holiday with them for the same reason, and he had no passport and liked to fly on holiday. But he did spend time with her and the children, regularly two to three times per week, from the morning until 11 pm. He would play with them, and did a lot of things with them but he could remember nothing specific. He remembered giving the youngest child a DVD of cartoons and some money for an ice-cream on her 6^th birthday. He remembered that she used to have some form of sickness, her hair used to fall out frequently, for which she went to hospital. None of the others had gone to hospital. His wife said in chief that none of her children had gone to hospital, although confirming that her youngest daughter had had a stress related problem with her hair falling out.

T, the oldest girl, now 19, had left school before the school leaving age because of some difficulties which had lead to her being tutored at home, when they lived with his father in law. The claimant did not know her plans at present other than that she was doing a singing course, or whether she intended to have further education or whether to be a singer - solo or with a group.

I turn now more to the substance of the claimant’s wife’s evidence. Mrs Beckett said in her statement that she had only ever known the claimant as Anthony Donovan Beckett and had never heard anyone refer to him by any other name. “Amidst his friends, I can boldly say that he is commonly referred to as Mr Beckett.” No one ringing up to speak to him had ever called him by any other name. In chief, she added that she called him “Tony” and that others called him “Anthony, Tony or T”. “T” was the only nickname she knew for him, and knew of no other names for him.

When Mrs Beckett gave evidence in chief, she gave rather more detail than had been in her statement. She had met the claimant in the park where she was with her baby; he introduced himself as Anthony; she calls him Tony. The claimant visited her at the Hornchurch address two or three times a week staying most of the day, until late evening if he had only come in the evening. This was about the same as when she moved to the Romford address in January 2008. The claimant had got on really well with her children, and especially the youngest for whom he bought things and to whom he had given a DVD and money for her 6^th birthday. He talked to them; they watched television together, played football or whatever they wanted to do.

Their relationship was “OK, alright, could be better”, but they were not spending as much time together as they would like. Neither of them was seeing anyone else. She had never been over to the flat where he lived, sleeping she thought on a settee. Although she said that she would prefer him to be with her, he had never been made aware that he could try to change his bail address. Neither of them had ever asked about it nor had they ever been advised about it. She said that she had asked the barrister about it the day before she gave her evidence. Ms Baruah intervened to say that she and the solicitors had never advised about this.

She did not know what to make of the allegation that he had fathered a child by Ms Weir; nothing had led her to suppose that he had cheated on her in the past. She did not know how she would react if Ms Weir’s and Ms Napier’s children were his or if he were in fact Everard Nathaniel Ramsay. She had never heard of that name before.

So far as she knew, the claimant had not known Ms Napier when they moved into 58 Pelham Road in May 2004. She could not afford to stay there on her own after his arrest. She stayed in the hostel in Ilford with her three children for 11 months; it was a family and mixed gender hostel. But the oldest daughter shuttled back and forwards between there, her father and his mother. The three children had different fathers. The claimant would come to visit her in Hornchurch once or twice a week. She moved in to the house in Romford in January 2008. All three children had lived with her in Hornchurch and lived with her now in Romford.

The eldest daughter had left school at 14, while they were still living with Mrs Beckett’s father; this child had had a lot of problems at school and then had had 6 weeks home tutorials. They had not been able to get any more education for her. She stayed at home apart from 6 months work at McDonalds. They had discussed further education for her. Mrs Beckett did not know why the claimant would not have known that. This daughter was singing and hopefully would get a recording contract. She added that the youngest had gone to hospital when she was 7 months old for bronchitis, before the claimant knew her. This child’s hair had started to fall out at her grandfather’s house over the stress of the move in 2004. They did not celebrate birthdays, and could not afford holidays, and had done nothing for the youngest child’s last birthday.

Mrs Beckett was only in contact with the father of her oldest child, who lived quite close and whom she saw once a week. His mother had also taken on the other two “as family”, as Mrs Beckett put it in cross-examination. She got along with him for the sake of the girls, “for his daughter basically” she explained in re-examination. She was the one who had had to deal with all her eldest daughter’s problems because although the claimant was part of their lives, she was still her mother. She did discuss things with him but he was not involved in the decision-making process.

She also told me that he was not involved in the decision-making over the other two children. She explained to me that the girls all had different fathers, adding later with some embarrassment that it was obvious to them that Mr Beckett could not be the father of any of them. The fathers of her two oldest children were brothers. The father of her oldest daughter had also taken on all the girls, as father. The claimant provided financial support when he came over amounting to £20-£40 every other week if he had it, to buy things for the girls. He did not work.

Ms Baruah asked further questions in consequence of these answers to me. Mrs Beckett replied that the claimant was the one who provided for the girls; clothes, shoes, food and so he was a big part of their lives. The eldest’s father was in the background. But the children all say that he is their Dad to avoid her having to explain that they all have different fathers, but none of them called him Dad. That is what they all told people. The middle one knows that he was not her father but the youngest did not. She described the claimant as “a father”, “someone who is there for them”. They could not explain what she meant by “there for them”. All three were closer to the claimant than they were to the man they called father, who saw the three girls about once or twice a month. She did not encourage him to come to the house. She did not know how he was with the girls when he saw them at his mother’s house, but the children would come home from seeing him saying that they were not happy: he never took them anywhere.

The claimant was 46, she said; then that he was coming up to 46. The claimant had not really talked about his time in Jamaica. She knew Paul Williams through the claimant, whom she called Anthony during her evidence. She had never come across an Everard Ramsay. She had known Michael Ramsey for a long time; he was related not to the claimant as far as she knew; they were just friends. She was asked in cross-examination about her wedding, and what she had said about the witnesses at the marriage application interview. She said that the two witnesses were Paul Williams, the claimant’s cousin, and “Natalie, her sister in law, Anthony’s brother’s wife.” She answered that she had assumed that Michael was his brother, but the claimant had told her soon afterwards, just after they had got home, that he was in fact a cousin’s brother. In re-examination, she said that the claimant had just come out and explained that Michael Ramsey was not his brother; it was about 2 weeks after the marriage interview. She could remember nothing about the conversation. She could not remember why she had thought they were brothers in the first place, and nothing had struck her as odd about the two being brothers with different surnames, nor had she asked how that had come about.

The claimant’s case was supported by the witness statement and oral evidence of Paul Williams, a cousin of Mr Beckett’s and a fire officer based at Euston. Beckett was the claimant’s name; he had never known him by any other name nor why he would try to enter the UK as Ramsay. He had never heard anyone refer to him as Everald [sic] Ramsay. They had known each other because when in 1985 Mr Williams had visited Jamaica on holiday and had gone to the area of Kingston where his parents had lived, he had been introduced to the claimant as a cousin by other family members. They had kept in touch, and eventually Mr Beckett came to visit him in England after he had invited him to come.

Mr Williams also elaborated considerably on his statement in chief. He seemed nervous through most of his evidence and ill at ease, agitated or bewildered at times. The claimant left court for Mr Williams’ evidence which was interposed during his cross-examination. He had first met the claimant in 1985 when he was introduced by family members; an older cousin had first pointed him out. He did not know his exact family line to the claimant, but he was not a first cousin, he thought. This introduction had been at his great uncle’s house; there had been a crowd to welcome him from England, and the claimant had come into the yard or front garden. In 2002, the claimant had at last come to the UK in response to the invitations of Mr Williams.

Mr Williams had only known the claimant as Anthony Beckett, and had not known of the Everard Ramsay name until he had heard of this case sometime earlier this year. He knew no one of that name. He had seen the claimant about, though not exactly twice a week since he arrived in 2001. He had visited the claimant in prison. He had seen the claimant with Mrs Beckett, but not frequently; he had seen the claimant on his own more often.

He was cross-examined closely about how he had met the claimant. He had gone to Jamaica in 1985 with his parents; they had been born there and he had family there. He could not remember exactly how they had been introduced or what name had been given; his memory of this meeting was hazy he agreed. But he was told that the claimant was family. He had never met the claimant’s mother. He told me that between 6 and 12 people had turned up; he had not spent long talking to the claimant. Mr Williams had gone back to Jamaica for another visit in 1997 or 2000 or, later in his evidence, 2001 and had gone to a completely different area but he had recognised the claimant there by his walk, and by sight. It was just a coincidence; he saw the walk and then the facial features. It came back to him that they had met on his earlier visit. They got talking and linked up properly. He could not remember his first name and had called him by “pet” names such as “old boy”. The claimant got in contact off and on by phone. They had only been in contact a couple of times between 1985 and 2001. The claimant had not given his name when he rang; indeed Mr Williams did not know of anyone who introduced himself on the phone. He just recognised “the phone”. On this second visit, Mr Williams had encouraged the claimant to come to England. Mr Williams thought that he had been to Jamaica more than 3 times. He told me that the second visit when he had met the claimant again when he went uptown had been in 1992, and that he had gone back 4 years in a row between 2000 and 2003; he did not really remember, he said.

Mr Williams said that he had known nothing of the claimant’s trying to come to the country in 2001 or of the wedding or of Michael Ramsey or Natalie Miller. He asked who Michael Ramsey was. The visit in 2001 had only come up lately. He was asked, as in chief, by what names he knew the claimant and replied this time that he called him “Mr Bean or Legs or Wicky Wacky” because the claimant was “a funny character”. Mr Williams was not too worried about his real name, he said, the person was more important. He added in re-examination that they only used nicknames on the phone, and he continued to use those names. The claimant called him “Paul or Fireman or Fire or little bro”. This was because Mr Williams was the smallest and youngest of the Williams’ brothers. He then said that it was because he was the oldest of his brothers. “Bro” was a term Mr Williams used with his fire-fighting colleagues. Then he added “I call Mr Beckett “old man” ”. He would call people “elder, Sir, Mum or dad or Fader”, when the community is the family. He put Donovan Beckett on the envelope on the few occasions he wrote to him, but he could not now remember the exact address in Jamaica.

In re-examination, he thought, after a pause, that he had first known the claimant as Anthony Donovan Beckett in Jamaica in the late 1980s, when he first went there, but as the years went by there was no need to know it. The claimant had been introduced there by his pet name. He then said that it might have been when he went back that he had got to know that the claimant was Beckett, then that it could have been in the UK, finally he was sure that he had found out in Jamaica, before 2001, when the claimant would have told him his name. He told me that he had known the claimant as Anthony Donovan Beckett when they first met.

He had been a witness and best man at the claimant’s wedding; he could not remember who else was there or the name of the lady witness. He knew Mrs Beckett, but not whether the claimant had any children with her. He thought that she had some already, but not how many.

Mr Williams knew Ms Weir only since she came to the UK in probably around 1999 -2001; he did not know what she did but he had seen her around and at dances. She was one of the claimant’s friends, on and off. He had seen her quite a few times. She was not one of his top friends, they were not blood relatives but she called Mr Williams family because they helped each other out. He had counter-signed her application for a driving licence, just as she had told DS Sweeney in her interview. Although she might have called him her cousin, in her Jamaican way of talking, they were not in fact cousins. It was a peculiarity of Ms Weir’s to call someone family when they were not; Mr Williams did not think that it happened ordinarily.

He had acted as a counter-signatory for the claimant when he applied for one of his UK driving licences. Whenever the claimant needed something, he would ask Mr Williams how it was done. He had not helped with any passport application. He had counter-signed for him about 10 times.

The claimant had been asked about Mr Williams in cross-examination. Mr Williams was a cousin but he did not know on which side or the family relationships whereby he was a cousin. They had first met in 1985/6, and again in 2000, introduced by someone whom he could not now remember, as a cousin from way back. It had been in the Fourth or Sixth Street area, not in a house but outside a high rise building. It was one big building or yard around a whole area where they had met, rather than in a house. A lot of people were walking by; it was where people hung out. He could not remember how they were introduced, someone just said that Paul Williams was one of the cousins, but he could not recall if any names were used as people did not use real or first names but pet names instead. They had had no conversation when they met and were introduced. He could not quite remember if Mr Williams had used the names Anthony Donovan Beckett for him between 1985 and 2001.

The claimant also said that they had been in regular contact ever since, and it had been Paul Williams who had invited him to England. He could not quite remember if Mr Williams had counter-signed anything for him, including the driving licence application. That was possible. In re-examination, the claimant added that he had met Mr Williams in the 1980s and again when he had run away to uptown, where they had talked again. He had contacted Mr Williams for help, and they had discussed things and names in Jamaica.

A statement was provided by Mr Carlton Cuthbert who did not attend to give evidence, and although there might have been some medical reason for that, he did not provide a medical certificate. Ms Baruah sought to rely on this statement, and there was no objection by Ms Chan for the SSHD; she made submission as to weight. Mr Cuthbert worked for the local council. Mr Cuthbert said that he had never known the claimant by any other name than Anthony Donovan Beckett. They had been friends in Kingston where they had grown up in the same area, although he was 5 years older than the claimant. Mr Cuthbert had come to the UK in 1972. Although they had gone to different schools, the claimant going to Denham Town Primary school, they would walk home together. He had met the claimant again in Jamaica in 1987, but had lost touch until, in 2003, he had come across him again in a restaurant. The claimant was by then a student and they kept in touch ever since, visiting each other at home and socialising. Mr Cuthbert would occasionally go to the nightclub in Tottenham where the claimant used to be a promoter.

The claimant was cross-examined about what Mr Cuthbert had written. He agreed that he had known Mr Cuthbert, who was 5-6 years older than him, from school days in Jamaica, when the claimant was in the 7-11s. He must have gone to the same back street school, which did not have a name and was staffed by volunteer teachers. When he was asked how all that fitted with Mr Cuthbert leaving Jamaica in 1972, as he said, and the claimant only starting Denham Town School in 1971, he replied that Mr Cuthbert grew up in Greenwich but he did not know if Mr Cuthbert had gone to Greenwich Primary School, as Mr Cuthbert had said; but it was an all age school, whose structure changed later. The claimant knew him as the “goatman” because his mother kept animals. But he could not remember what Mr Cuthbert had called him in childhood, because he had so many nicknames.

The claimant was unable to remember quite exactly when the two of them had met again, but it was sometime in the 1980s in Jamaica. They had next met in the UK when he was at a college in the Seven Sister’s Road in 2001/2 and they had met in a local West Indian restaurant. Mr Cuthbert had recognised him by his limp. The claimant said that he was now 46. Mr Cuthbert knew that he was Beckett but the claimant could not remember what Mr Cuthbert had called him, nor what they had talked about. Everyone has a different name and Mr Cuthbert called him “Pavi, brother or son”. The claimant did not use his surname on the road, and had so many different Caribbean street names: “Tony, Don, Tippy”. In re-examination, the claimant said that Mr Cuthbert had known his surname in Jamaica, and they had known each others’ parents as they had been quite close, as kids in the same area.

I asked him about his age, as he had said that he was 46. He confirmed that he was 46, but said that his birthday was 15 July 1962, and that he would be 47 next birthday. If he were Beckett he would have been 45 when giving evidence, 47 if he were Ramsay.

I am satisfied that the claimant is Everard Nathaniel Ramsay, that Anthony Donovan Beckett is a false identity which he has used routinely in the UK but that he has also used the Ramsay identity here as well. It follows that I am satisfied that he has obtained leave to remain by deception on all those occasions on which he has used the Beckett identity. Indeed, I have no real doubt about those conclusions, and if I had to apply the criminal standard of proof, it would have been met here. My reasons are as follows.

First, as Ms Chan points out in her submissions, it is inherently improbable that a would-be entrant would use a false name first, and then upon that being unsuccessful would seek to enter and remain in a true name. That requires some care to be given to the explanation proffered by the claimant for such a sequence of events. I am entirely satisfied that the explanation given for that by the claimant is completely false.

Second, the claimant denied for nearly two years that he had tried to enter the UK as Everard Nathaniel Ramsay. It is clear that the denial by his solicitors in their letter of 5 December 2005, on his behalf and at his instructions, was more than just a denial that he was in fact Everard Nathaniel Ramsay; it was also a denial of the deception asserted against him that he had tried to enter in that name in March 2001. That was why they were seeking to challenge the evidence upon which the SSHD was relying to make good her case, which included the Ramsay passport and handwriting. Despite the claimant’s contention to the contrary, I am entirely satisfied that the full allegation was clear to him: the notice under s 10 was concerned with the identity in which he entered the UK and gave all the names upon which that deception was based. His denial did not involve a positive assertion that he had entered in March 2001 but in the name of Beckett or some name other than Ramsay; his denial involved the clear implicit positive assertion that he had not come in at all in any identity in March 2001, ie that he had not tried to enter as Ramsay or anyone else. That denial was untrue and he knew it. He only accepted the facts when the facial mapping and other evidence left him no choice. His contention that it was only when he saw a clear photograph that he realised that it was him on the Ramsay passport, and that he had tried to enter in that name, is absurd. He is Ramsay, that is why he used that passport and was now trying to cancel it.

Third, I have set out at some length the evolution of the claimant’s evidence about how he came to be using a passport in the name of Everard Nathaniel Ramsay. None of it is remotely believable. His first statement was striking for its brevity on this issue. It said only that he had obtained a passport because he was desperate to flee for his life. In chief, his evidence was that the name on the passport just happened to be what it was. Later, he confirmed that it was happenstance, because he did not know how the name had come to be there. However, the fact that he was fleeing for his life had not lead to any mention of his travails and fears on arrival in the UK in the course of the entry interview. These fears also ceased remarkably quickly on his enforced return, enabling him to acquire a passport in his “true” name, and incidentally never to raise the question of asylum or related human rights at any stage in the years he had been here. Then he said that he was fleeing for his life and coming to a wedding coincidentally, (and coincidentally a wedding involving a relative called Ramsay). He said he had told the Immigration Officer that he was coming for his brother’s wedding. In re-examination he explained that the Ramsay name had got on to this passport before he told the group which provided it about the wedding; then he said that it came afterwards because he gave this group the invitation letter bearing the Everard Nathaniel Ramsay names. But when I asked how those names had got on to this letter in the first place, so that he could then show the invitation to the Immigration Officer along with the passport, he came up with this sequence of correspondence involving the surname alone, following a letter being given by him to the group with which to obtain the passport, followed by a letter being sent by him to Natalie or Michael with the full names on the passport the group had come up with in order to procure the matching invitation which Natalie or Michael then sent to him.

I would have expected an honest man to have explained the position clearly in his statement and not to have waited until the various issues were put to him orally. I believe that he wanted to keep his powder dry because he knew that there would be difficulties and that it would be best for him to keep open a full range of possible lies. But the claimant was not able to foresee far ahead the problems his answers might create for him. They changed so much that none could be regarded as true or reliable. In reality, and it was obvious, the claimant was just making up any answer on the hoof to get him out of whatever tight corner he was in at the time. The idea that his flight for his life coincided with a brother’s wedding, is barely credible. The suggestion that he would go through the rigmarole over a letter, then a passport, and then an invitation is not believable in its own right, still less is it believable as the behaviour of a man fleeing for his life, and unable to obtain a passport in his own name. It obviously dawned on him, in the light of Ms Baruah’s question, that there might be advantage in having received a letter with his name on it from the wedding hosts in order to explain how the name had got onto the passport and coincided with the surname of the bridegroom. It then dawned on him as I asked him questions that that created a further problem: how had those names been on the invitation if the invitation had come first, and the invitation and the passport were supposed to support each other? Hence the laughable sequence of events he described. The final position he arrived at by the end of his evidence would surely have been something, if true, that he would have remembered and said much earlier. He realised that the one answer he could not give was that the names were on the invitation because that was what his relatives called him, because they knew and used his real name. But in my judgment the invitation, if there was one, was in those names precisely because that is what he is called and is what his relatives knew him as. His sequence of lies unintentionally reveals the truth.

Fourth, the fact that he described Michael Ramsay as a “brother”, also supports the view that the claimant’s real surname is Ramsay. I appreciate that this could not be more than a useful pointer because half brothers could have different fathers and could have taken their fathers’ names, and that “brother” can be a term which is used outside that specific relationship. However, the claimant did describe Michael Ramsay as a nephew in his first immigration interview in March 2001, which goes beyond the claimant’s suggestion that they are distant cousins at best or friends only, both of which claims formed part of his evidence. In his oral evidence, as the significance of the name was apparent, the claimant was at unconvincing pains to deny any close blood relationship, which years before would have mattered less. The claimant’s use of the word “brother” to describe Michael in the ILR application interview is very significant. This was a formal occasion when the use of slang or street language would have been less likely; the relationships were given precisely as “my cousin and my brother’s wife”. Caribbean cultural use of the word “brother”, if what the claimant says is correct, to convey a different meaning from the one the claimant would have known the interviewer was interested in, is very unlikely. Mrs Beckett also described Michael in the same way at that same interview. She would have had no reason to use that word other than in its normal English way. I shall come to her evidence later, but I thought that the varying evidence on this aspect from them, about the claimant telling her that that was wrong, quite unbelievable. She said that he had just come out with it at some point after the interview.

The DNA evidence offers “limited” or “moderate” support for the views that the two are respectively brothers or half brothers, rather than unrelated to each other; although it does not preclude some other close relationship. I do not accept Ms Baruah’s submission that the DNA evidence suffered from the Doheny fallacy; R v Doheny [1996] EWCA Crim 728. The fallacy is that if only one person in a million has a DNA profile matching the crime stain, one of whom is the defendant, there is a million to one probability that it is his DNA. The Doheny fallacy is not in the report. Nor does the report commit an equivalent error to one to which DNA reports were prey some years ago of offering an opinion on the probability that X is the criminal. There is no objectionable opinion. Those flaws are simply not in the nature of the mathematical exercise which underlies the probability of a type of sibling relationship. Ms Baruah suggested in argument that as the ratios were based on UK figures they could not be translated in to ratios sound for the smaller communities in Jamaica. She produced no evidence to support her proposition; in so far as it relied on an inexpert understanding, I would not have thought that it obviously helped her. She could have called DNA expert evidence; but said that she was not taking issue with the defendant’s report’s findings. Rather, she noted and I accept that the level of support which the DNA report, taken at face value, offers for the proposition that the two are related in those ways is “limited” or “moderate” by its very terms.

The DNA evidence however must be considered by me in conjunction with the evidence about how the claimant and Mrs Beckett described Michael Ramsey as the claimant’s brother. In conjunction this evidence offers quite clear support for a close relationship, and hence to the Ramsay identity for Beckett. It is not said by anyone that the Michael Ramsey identity itself is false.

Ms Baruah had a further submission to make about the DNA evidence based on the Human Tissue Act 2004. This was not foreshadowed in her skeleton argument and came as a surprise to Ms Chan, and to me. This was contrary to the purpose for which skeleton arguments had been ordered by Cranston J. Although the facts were not fully known before the oral evidence, this was an argument which she knew that she might pursue if the facts which she intended to elicit about the obtaining of the second sample from the claimant came out as they did. If she had hoped not to alert the Officers to a line of questioning, and that was not a permitted reservation within Cranston J’s Order, she still put in nothing to alert me or Ms Chan before she came to this on the second day of her oral closing submissions.

In the end, there was nothing in it. S45 of the Act makes it an offence to use the results of an analysis of DNA obtained without the subject’s consent except in specified, that is “excepted”, circumstances. These “excepted” circumstances include the prevention or detection of crime, which includes establishing who did what and in what general circumstances; it is broadly expressed. Obtaining entry or leave to remain by deception is obviously a crime. On the face of the Act, the use of the second DNA sample was quite unobjectionable. Ms Baruah submitted that DS Sweeney had admitted, or I should infer, that the purpose of the search for the second Provisional Driving Licence had been simply to obtain DNA for this comparison, and had therefore been unlawful; and its product should be excluded.

DS Sweeney did not admit that the search had been in order to obtain DNA; he denied it and the possibility of the comparison was in his mind only at the stage when the DNA was being taken after the arrest. I am not prepared to reject that evidence as untrue, and infer instead that the DNA comparison was the motive behind the search. I do not doubt but that the police were looking to obtain as much material as they could with which to prosecute the claimant for something. I would not regard the search as unlawful either if the possible comparison had been part of the motive. I am also by no means sure, even if the motive had been to provide a pretext for obtaining a sample, that that would have constituted an offence under s45, because the impugned motive would still have been to obtain DNA for the purpose of detecting the crime involved in the immigration offence which underlies this case. Ms Baruah did not cite any authorities relating to the inadmissibility of evidence obtained as the consequence of an illegal search either.

Ms Baruah referred to s35 Data Protection Act 1998 and Part 2 (1) of the Schedule of Principles in the context of the use of Michael Ramsey’s DNA. I could not see what principle or provision had been offended by the use in this comparison of Michael Ramsey’s DNA which the police already had in a different connection, or why that should affect the weight I gave to the DNA comparison. Ms Baruah had not put this argument in any Skeleton despite the direction of Cranston J.

Fifth, I turn to the significance of the evidence about Ms Napier and Ms Weir. The claimant agreed that he knew both women in the UK. Each of them registered Everard Nathaniel Napier as the father of a child. The claimant was required by Holman J to provide a statement dealing fully with his relationships to those two women. It was self-evident from the brevity of his statements and the need Ms Baruah understandably felt to seek further evidence in chief, which itself left some quite obvious questions unasked and unanswered, that he had been deliberately unforthcoming. That in my view is because he had something to conceal.

There is no doubt that Ms Napier lived at 58 Pelham Road, when the claimant lived there, and he accepts that he knew her before he moved there, and had not told his wife that he had known her earlier. He had found this address for Mrs Beckett and him to live in. The child would have been conceived in early 2003. Neither had asked who the father was. There is no obvious reason for Ms Napier to say that her current partner was Anthony Beckett if it was not; a close identification with the claimant so soon after his arrest would not have been the obvious safe choice. The name Everard Nathaniel Ramsay on the birth certificate is a remarkable coincidence, if that is what it is. In the same house as Beckett, current partner or no, is someone who has a child fathered by someone with the very name which he falsely used to try to enter the UK; it is even more remarkable that she should now have a partner in the name in which he in fact entered. This name also apparently never cropped up in any conversation: the claimant would not discuss his business with her or ask her about hers. This coincidence could not be explained by the claimant. That is because it is no coincidence at all: he is Ramsay, and Beckett.

There is no doubt but that Ms Weir knew the claimant, had taken photographs of him with the baby, that someone had written the full Ramsay name and lineage on the back, and that they were photographs of him. The child would have been conceived in late 2001. The claimant was by then in the UK. There is no obvious reason for anyone to write what they did on the back if not to refer to the man on the front nor why the person doing so would have been wrong about the relationship being inscribed. The obvious person to write in those terms would be the mother. There was no reason at all for anyone to be dissembling or inaccurate in a document which was in existence before the search. It is a positive identification of the claimant as Everard Nathaniel Ramsay, the father is so named on the birth certificate and by the photograph. I find it impossible to believe that, having been invited back to meet the baby, he did not enquire its name, because he was uninterested. He said what he did because it most surely would have been extraordinary to find out that the names were so similar to the ones he used March 2001. It beggars belief that the claimant, having been invited back to see the baby, picked it up and held it affectionately for photographs yet did not ask its names, other than because he knew them already. The coincidence of the names on the passport and the baby’s names would have been quite difficult to explain consistently with his story, and so he had to deny knowing them.

It would be also be quite a remarkable coincidence for person writing on the back of the photograph to have used a nick name so close to or the same as the one admitted to by the claimant. Ms Weir confirmed in interview that the man in the photographs was Everard Ramsay, also known as “Leg”. She had no reason to lie, and she answered without any hesitation and would not have known that it had any further implications for the claimant. I thought that he had denied that he was ever called “Legs”, but was known as “Legs Diamond”, but it may be that he was denying only the name “Leg” or the common use of “Legs”. However, even taking his evidence that he is not often called just “Legs” and never called “Leg” that remains a remarkable similarity. In any event I do not believe what he says about the precise use of nicknames by a man with so many and so varied appellations by his friends, relatives and in the street.

Once again it is a remarkable coincidence that the claimant should meet up with a girl who has also had a baby with a father using the same name as that in which the claimant tried to enter the country, if it is not him. Even more that he should know two girls who had children by a man using the name in which he tried to enter, if it is not him. And that he should not ask anything about either baby’s father. I do not believe in such coincidences. The claimant is lying about all of this. He is obviously Ramsay, who has also used the name Beckett when it suited him.

This conclusion is reinforced, along with the reliability of the hearsay evidence, by the handwriting expert’s report. It may offer only “moderate support” for the conclusion that the signature on the birth certificates was written by the same man who wrote the signature on the Ramsay passport, and the claimant has not suggested that he did not sign the passport after accepting that it was him on the photograph, but taken with the other evidence of his relationship with the women, those aspects of the evidence make a compelling picture.

There is no evidence of an individual called Everard Nathaniel Ramsay, not being the claimant, being seen at 58 Pelham Road, where Ms Napier lived with the Becketts for a year, or anywhere else. No witness had heard of such a person. If there is such an individual, who is Jamaican and appears to have fathered two children in the UK by two women known to the claimant but who is not the claimant, it is surprising that their paths did not cross. It is of course possible that where someone takes over the identity of another, the acts of that other person will be wrongly attributed to him. However, the total evidence relating to Ms Napier and Ms Weir goes considerably beyond that which might be mishap in the use of a false identity.

Ms Baruah’s suggestion that the photographs obtained on the search of Ms Weir’s should be disregarded or discounted because they had or might have been obtained by an illegal seizure relies only on the uncertainty of Mr Church as to what s17 empowered. The search was unauthorised by Mr Richmond on a proper basis. There was power to seize them; Mr Church was aware that that gave him the necessary power although he was unsure why. The suggestion unspoken to either witness was that Mr Richmond had warned Mr Church that Ms Baruah might ask a question about the seizure powers and that s17 provided the answer. That is no basis for discounting such evidence.

The evidence of each woman is hearsay: Ms Baruah submitted that I should limit the weight I gave to that evidence, as it had not been shown that they were unable or unwilling to give evidence in person, and they might have had motives for not being truthful. I agree that it was not shown that they were unwilling or unable to attend, although the reliability of oral evidence from one facing charges of deception and both facing removal might have been open to question anyway. Paradoxically perhaps, the evidence relied on from them is less likely in my view to have been tainted by mixed motives. Indeed I see no reason not to take it at face value. Both interviews were under caution with a solicitor present. There is a near contemporaneous record of what Ms Napier said in summary, and the actual record of what Ms Weir said. There was no suggestion to either officer present that he had not accurately recorded what was said.

Ms Baruah further submitted that their evidence should be given less weight because the claimant had been prevented from making contact with them, because the SSHD would not reveal their addresses. She submitted that the evidence had been adduced in circumstances which suggested an attempt to prevent a proper evaluation of its weight. This was a relevant consideration in weighing hearsay evidence under s4 (2)(f) of the Civil Evidence Act 1995. The police had not asked if they were willing to attend nor had they procured witness statements from them, and other questions which were not recorded might have been put to the women. The reliability of oral evidence could have been affected by the threats of removal and Ms Weir was facing criminal prosecution anyway. I do not accept that their evidence is really affected by the absence of witness statements. I have already referred to the extent to which the evidence was accepted, and the limited evidence which the claimant gave about them despite Holman J’s direction. I have considered the scope for mistake in what they said, or deceit. The claimant could not imagine why they had said what they said about him. He would only have suggested that they were lying. This was not an area of mistake. But even without hearing them, it is clear that on this and other topics he was not telling the truth and what he had to say was wholly far fetched.

Ms Baruah also appeared to submit that if Ms Chan relied on the Data Protection Act 1998 to persuade Holman J to refuse the claimant’s request that he direct the SSHD to disclose their addresses to the claimant, she was wrong to do so. She made no submissions on this in her distinctly skeletal Skeleton Argument, raising it on the second day of submissions, so that Ms Chan did not have even overnight to consider it, contrary to the directions of Cranston J. Ms Chan felt unable to dealt with this point in the absence of notice, and did not understand it. And it was unhelpful to the court as well. The direction of Holman J was followed by the SSHD. The reservation in his order was that the question of admissibility as hearsay could be raised, but in the end their evidence was not said to be inadmissible. I rather doubt that he expected the question of the obligation of disclosure to be raised by the side wind of an argument as to weight. I regard that as an attempt to go behind the order. Third, in so far as I understood the argument, and any deficiencies in that are entirely the responsibility of Ms Baruah, it added nothing to the argument under s4 of the Civil Evidence Act 1995.

The evidence which I have discussed above, the obtaining of the passport in the Ramsay identity, the description of Ramsay as his brother, and the evidence of the two women, when taken altogether make a powerful and compelling case that the claimant is Ramsay and has lied about his identity. I also found his evidence to be so evasive and vague that nothing in what he said or how he said it, a witness who took refuge in a failing memory whenever it suited him, could persuade me that he was being other than routinely and casually deceitful.

Seventh, I next consider how the evidence of the witnesses called on the claimant’s behalf affects the position. The crucial issue is whether the claimant is Ramsay or has been known as Ramsay. Evidence that the claimant is known as Beckett does not necessarily go very far in helping to resolve that issue. It is clear that the identity of Beckett is one which he has used in the UK, and some people would know him by that name. What the evidence has to be examined for is whether the claimant was only known as Anthony Donovan Beckett and was not known as Ramsay, in so far as any such formal names were used at all. I start with the two witnesses who claim to have known the claimant in Jamaica before he arrived in the UK, because that is where the name by which he was known would be of greatest assistance in resolving the issue.

Mr Williams’ evidence as to how he had met the claimant, had been introduced to him, as to their relationship and importantly as to how he had first come to know the claimant’s name and that it was Beckett was vague, and varying. I found his story of a chance meeting when he recognised the claimant by his walk, his uncertainty about the number of times he had been to Jamaica undermined further the reliability of his evidence. His evidence was that he had hardly ever used any part of the name Anthony Donovan Beckett, or shortening of any part of that, except on a few letters to Jamaica, and that the claimant had hardly ever used that name, if at all. He could give no reliable evidence that the claimant was known as Beckett at all, let alone that he had not been known as Ramsay. The certainties in his written statement were not supported by the detail in his oral evidence in chief and cross-examination. He became at little firmer once he had reached the safer waters of re-examination, but remained to me quite unpersuasive as to his reliability. Indeed, I regret that I found him not just unreliable but untruthful. I do not know how or when or where they first met, or whether they are related – they may well be - but I concluded that Mr Williams knew at least that the claimant used the Ramsay and Beckett names. I also note that Mr Williams knew Ms Weir as a friend of the claimant and, as her evidence showed, she knew him as Ramsay.

The reliability of this evidence was not enhanced by the vagueness of what the claimant had to say about how the two met and were introduced and when the name Beckett was first used. He could not remember if Mr Williams had used the name Beckett for him from 1985 to 2001. I was struck by the differences in recollection over the number of times Mr Williams had helped him as a counter-signatory. The claimant had brought him along to help him out again. Ms Baruah submitted that if the claimant and Mr Williams had been dishonest, they would not have given such incoherent evidence but would have come up with something better. That is a last ditch submission; their best was simply not very good.

The evidence of Mr Cuthbert was unhelpful to the claimant. It is notable for the limited knowledge which Mr Cuthbert claims to have had of the claimant for so many years, which limits its value as evidence that the claimant did not use and was not known by the name Ramsay. I cannot give any weight to Mr Cuthbert’s evidence about how he knew the claimant only as Beckett and not as Ramsay. It was lacking in the sort of details about how they spoke to each other and what names friends used in their presence or about him.

The claimant’s own evidence about Mr Cuthbert strongly suggested that the two were contradicting themselves over where the claimant had gone to school and when. The claimant did not know where Mr Cuthbert had gone to school, although Mr Cuthbert knew where the claimant had gone to school: Denham Town Primary. The clear impression from Mr Cuthbert’s statement is that the two walked home together over quite a long period of time, although they were at different primary schools in the same area. But the date when the claimant’s school record said that he started was September 1971, whereas Mr Cuthbert left Jamaica shortly afterwards in 1972. If he had started aged 9, then Mr Cuthbert would have been 14-15 years old when at Greenwich Primary School, which is above what the claimant said was the leaving age for primary schools, 12-13. It is impossible to see how they could have been at primary schools at the same time. The claimant’s school record had already led him to change his evidence about the age at which he started school from 6 to 9. His response to this point was garbled and non-responsive. He had already started saying that the two had gone to some backstreet school, when he had previously said that Denham Primary was his first school.

I do not give any weight to the school record as a piece of evidence as to the true identity , not just because of the evidence given by the claimant about his schooling, but also because of the ease with which such a document can be obtained by anyone. Possession of such a document proves nothing about the identity of the possessor. DS Sweeney’s evidence cannot be disregarded for want of further questions, perfectly legitimate in themselves, about whether anyone else had asked for a record of Beckett or whether there were any photographs of the pupils.

Eighth, I found the evidence of Mrs Beckett unconvincing on the claimant’s identity. There was a wedding in which the claimant used the Beckett identity. I accept, as I have said that that is an identity which he used in the UK which went beyond merely obtaining leave to enter and remain in that name. He was after all prosecuted in that name. I found their evidence about the brother, Ramsey, quite unconvincing. She had every reason to believe that Michael Ramsey was the brother, until she says that the claimant told her that he was not. I was wholly unconvinced of the truthfulness of her answer that she had not enquired why the brother had a different surname. She had not enquired in my judgment because she knew that the claimant had more than one identity, whatever excuses or reasons he may have given her for that and for using the Beckett identity. He may even have told her that that was the real one and she may have believed him.

I found her assertion that she had only ever heard him called Anthony Donovan Beckett or “Mr Beckett” quite unconvincing in view of the range of names which he claimed to use. The evidence given by Mr Williams was that the name was hardly ever used for him, and he preferred pet names. They did not suggest use of the shortened versions of Anthony such as she herself said she used.

It was clear that this is not a normal marriage. It is striking how little mention was made of the relationship in the original application for judicial review, and in statements provided by the claimant. They had been married for three years by December 2005, but the main concern expressed by the claimant related to his £15000, and virtually nothing was said about any family. The first mention of anything of substance was in the November 2007 statement and that was about as brief as it could be. Her written evidence was so short as to be misleading about their true relationship, and so exaggerated about the claimant’s real relationship to her daughters, that I am reluctant to take what she said at face value. I found it astonishing, if this were a genuine marital relationship, that the two lived apart for so long after the claimant left prison, without either of them enquiring as to whether the bail conditions could be varied so that they could live together, especially after Mrs Beckett had moved into three bed roomed houses. Ms Beckett said that living together would help their relationship and she wanted it to improve. She never visited him in his flat. He only visited her 2-3 times a week. This would be even more astonishing if the relationship between her daughters and the claimant were as she described it in her statement and in re-examination. Between those safer times she had had to depart from the script she had learned about the closeness of their relationship. His own evidence about the relationship showed no affection for her or the children, and little knowledge of or involvement in what they did. I sensed a possible greater attachment on her part. The relationship was closer to one of convenience, at least on his part, with no ties, and co-operation on her part when required. Ms Baruah’s submission, that Mrs Beckett could have been warmer about the relationship but was honestly admitting to uncertainties about it, was making the best of a bad job.

I was a little surprised that Mrs Beckett had not asked any questions of Ms Napier about the father of her child, when they lived together, which would have revealed the name Everard Ramsay to her. She said that she had never heard of that name. But I found the claimant’s changing evidence about when he had known Ms Napier, the fact that he had found the flat, the fact that he said that he had not told his wife that he already knew her in a supposedly innocent acquaintanceship, and the name of the father of her child all supportive of the evidence of Ms Napier about her current partner. As is have said I can see no reason for her to have lied about that. Mrs Beckett is either not telling the truth when she says that she was living with the claimant as husband and wife at 58 Pelham Road, or is a wholly unobservant witness of her husband’s behaviour, and is someone in whom he would not confide or trust. Ms Baruah’s submission that it would have been a bold move to take one’s wife to live with one’s partner, may be correct. But not beyond this somewhat brazen claimant. In reality I think that she did know that he used the Ramsay identity, even if she did not know all that he got up to while using it. Either way, her evidence about what her husband was called and how others referred to him is wholly unpersuasive that he is not Ramsay or that he does not use the name Ramsay.

I do not find the Jamaican birth certificate of any weight when set against all the other evidence. There is no doubt but that such a document can be obtained by someone other than the holder of that identity, and that can then be used to generate the other identity documents. No proof of identity is required to obtain it, and one can be obtained even without the birth registration number. So the chain of documents proves nothing.

The absence of answers to the questions asked about the passports of the Jamaican authorities does not mean that I should give less weight to the SSHD’s evidence: it is clear that the claimant used one false passport, and knew how to obtain it. The only question is which one was false. No immigration officer commented that the one presented was tampered with or false in that sense. It was his genuine photograph on each passport. The claimant has shown no obvious disadvantage in the absence of the Beckett passport; it would have been useful to have had the one he disposed of in Jamaica as well. What might have been of assistance is the documentary chain for each but if a birth certificate and a signature of someone who knew the claimant sufficed, it is difficult to see that the case would be advanced either way given how easy it is to obtain the necessary genuine certificates in a false identity. The UK driving licences are of no value in showing identity.

I reject Ms Baruah’s submission that the SSHD had a positive duty to verify or disprove the documents submitted. The question for the court is whether the SSHD has discharged the burden on her to the requisite standard on all the evidence. It is perfectly possible for a court to recognise that further inquiries might assist and to give lesser weight to a document accordingly, if it thinks that appropriate. But it is also open to a court to recognise that genuine documents can be obtained in a false identity, and that ascertaining the genuineness of the document may therefore well not go very far. The question will still remain for judgment whether in the circumstances of the case, the documents are of any weight in establishing identity. It is not for the Court to have to accept as a true identity or document anything which the SSHD cannot show to have been obtained through documents which did not reflect the true identity of the user, especially where there is evidence that such documents can be obtained without proof of any identity at all.

When all the evidence is taken as a whole, I am quite satisfied that the SSHD has amply discharged the burden on her in relation to the identity of the claimant. It is obvious that he has been known by names other than Anthony Donovan Beckett and that the information he gave was incomplete, and wholly deceitful. Accordingly, I am satisfied that he obtained leave to remain by deception and is liable to removal. There is no dispute but that that was deception in a material particular.

I add that even if I not had been satisfied of the claimant’s identity, but rather that it had only been shown that the claimant had used the Ramsay identity to enter in March 2001, I would not have accepted Ms Baruah’s submission that that did not involve obtaining leave to remain by deception. The detailed facts of the cases in Khawaja do not really assist. The question is what do the forms ask and declare. Identity is very important to any immigration application including a marriage-based one. The use of other names to enter or to seek to enter can be very important to the identity put forward and the immigration record can shed light on the whole background to any application. The claimant would have been known by the name of Ramsay on the occasion of that attempted entry. I would still have found that he obtained leave to remain by deception. However, the question on the form could be clearer, and ask specifically whether an application to enter or remain has been made in a name other than that now being used. This is not a case of alternative transliterations, or minor variants in the spelling of foreign names with no standard spelling.

I turn to the Article 8 claim. As Ms Baruah recognised, this claim was rather difficult to sustain if the conclusion reached on identity was the one I have reached. It is also for the claimant to show that he has Article 8 rights which removal would interfere with. It is for the SSHD to justify the interference. But on any view, the family relationship is unimportant to the claimant. I have set out how his case on it developed, and how little the relationship means to him. It is essentially useful from an immigration point of view. He may go over to her house, but if he does, he does not go there often enough to remember the colour of her door. Her evidence about their relationship is not reliable or trustworthy, rather it was very exaggerated; I felt that she knew what she had to say and tried to say it when the pressure was off. I do not accept that he has any close relationship with the children. He is not involved in any decision-making. He knew little of their background, and appears just to watch television or play football with them. Mrs Beckett’s suggestion that he was a big part of their lives, someone who was there for them was wholly unspecific, and I do not believe it. They do not regard him as their father or as in relationship like that. They may like the money or treats he occasionally gives, if that part of the evidence is true, but the suggestion that he gives significant financial support beyond occasional money was wholly unconvincing. It emerged in further re-examination after Mrs Beckett had told me that he gave them £20-40 every other week, if he had it, and did not work. I simply do not believe that if it was the claimant who provided the girl’s clothes, shoes, food and was a big part of their lives, that that degree of financial support would not have been made clear earlier. It is not easy to see how the claimant could do that without working either. He may still have a business of sorts in music promoting, the one in which he made the £15000 forfeit under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

This is not in truth a genuine marriage from his point of view at any rate. He may know the children, they may get on, but that is it. Removal would not interfere with any significant relationships, but only with a very limited aspect of his life. It may be that the relationship is more important to Mrs Beckett than to him, but it is still not a significant relationship and the interference which his removal would bring to her rights and to those of her children would also be of a low degree. Although the effect of removal would probably to be end the relationship, because he is unlikely to be able to return lawfully within the Rules, that is not an interference with any significant aspect of their lives. If she did not know that he was Ramsay, her feelings may be altered anyway, as she said, by my finding that he is Ramsay and by my judgment on the facts that, if what she said was true, he has deceived her and cheated on her.

The removal of the claimant could not rationally constitute any disproportionate interference in anyone’s rights but would respect the need for immigration laws to be enforced against those who breach them by deception. The case is clearly unfounded. I would have regarded this as a more difficult case if he genuinely had been only Beckett, who had only once used the name Ramsay unsuccessfully to enter e.g. to claim asylum for some plausible reason, and if the marriage had been a genuine and subsisting relationship in which he had a real role with the children. But those are not the facts by a very long way.

In the light of that conclusion, it is not necessary to reach any conclusion on the submission by Ms Chan that, for the purposes of the Article 8 claim, I was limited to the material which had been before the SSHD when she made the decision under challenge in February 2006. Some but not all of the material relevant to Article 8 was relevant to the question of the claimant’s identity. I would normally regard it as wrong to have regard to material not before the SSHD in deciding whether the decision that the Article 8 claim was clearly unfounded was wrong in law. However, that would only lead to a further round of claim and decision. The SSHD is at times content to adopt a pragmatic approach to the unfolding evidence and grounds rather than to require a sequence of fresh claims and fresh decisions. Given the precedent fact issue here, and the related stance of the SSHD towards what made the Article 8 claim unfounded, namely the true identity and absence of true relationship, and the timing of Ms Chan’s submission in that respect at the end of the case, I regard her as having in effect treated herself as having made a continuing decision through the hearing that the claim was and would be unfounded on the emerging evidence. This is the position Ms Baruah urged on me, in the hope that it would assist her client if my findings on his identity had been more favourable.

These claims are dismissed.