Rasic v Secretary Of State For Home Department [2001] EWCA Civ 136 (6th February 2001)

Neutral Citation Number: [2001] EWCA Civ 136 C/2000/3144 IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION) ON APPEAL FROM THE IMMIGRATION APPEAL TRIBUNAL Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2 Tuesday, 6th February 2001 B e f o r e : LORD JUSTICE SEDLEY ____________________ NATASA RASIC Appellant -v- THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT Respondent ____________________ Computer Aided Transcript of the Palantype Notes of Smith Bernal Reporting Limited 190 Fleet Street London EC4A 2AG Tel: 020 7421 4040 Fax: 020 7831 8838 (Official Shorthand Writers to the Court) ____________________ Mr R Harrap (instructed by Messrs Pearson & Winston, London W2) appeared on behalf of the Appellant. The Respondent did not appear and was not represented. ____________________ HTML VERSION OF JUDGMENT ____________________ Crown Copyright © LORD JUSTICE SEDLEY: Mr Harrap comes before the court this morning in order to renew orally an application for permission to appeal which I refused on the papers on 8th December 2000. His client, Natasa Rasic, is a Croatian Serb. Put very shortly, she has been entirely believed in relation to her account of herself but refused asylum by the Special Adjudicator and by the Immigration Appeal Tribunal principally because neither was persuaded that, on the in-country material then available, she had a well-founded fear of persecution should she be returned home. The Immigration Appeal Tribunal made a further adverse finding in relation to the possibility of internal relocation which may well be vulnerable but only matters if they went wrong on the first question. This morning, however, Mr Harrap has not gone into these issues, for this reason. In the interim, Natasa Rasic's sister, Sanja, has made her own application for asylum in this country. Although it has been refused by the Home Office and, on appeal, by the Special Adjudicator, permission has been given by the Immigration Appeal Tribunal to appeal to it. The reason, in essence, is that the Special Adjudicator, who had (in contra-distinction to Natasa's case) held that there was now, on more up-to-date material, a well-founded fear of persecution should Sanja be returned to Croatia, had gone on, without any prompting from the Home Office, to hold that there was a possibility of internal relocation which made the difference. It is not known how the appeal will fare but, at its best, Mr Harrap may hope simply to succeed on the point that he had all the findings necessary in his client's favour to establish her entitlement to asylum and that it was not open to the Adjudicator to devise a case of internal relocation which was never advanced by the Home Office presenting officer. We shall see. What may be very important for present purposes is that Sanja's case demonstrates that in two respects the ground upon which Natasa's case was decided may have shifted. One is the in-country information which was able to be updated in Sanja's case (which was heard later) to include a UNHCR report of June 2000 (quoted at paragraph 10.6), which was clearly influential in the Special Adjudicator's decision, favourable as it was in this regard to the applicant. The other is that the evidence about the two women's father was perhaps more compelling and more relevant in Sanja's case than it seemed to be in Natasa's, with the concomitant possibility that it too, if reconsidered, might have a helpful effect upon her claim. In those circumstances there seems to me to be force in Mr Harrap's desire to stand over Natasa's case while Sanja's case proceeds through the final stage of appeal before the Immigration Appeal Tribunal and then, in the light of the outcome, to consider whether it is appropriate to return to the Home Secretary in order to invite him to reconsider Natasa's case. This court cannot know what that process will produce. Little, if any of it, may have a bearing on the question to which, if it comes back before me, I shall have to return, namely whether, on the material before the Immigration Appeal Tribunal, it committed any arguable error of law in reaching the conclusion it did. But what is much more important in cases like this is that humanitarian issues should be decided upon the basis of the best available and the most up-to-date information; and, further, that two decisions which march in step should be consistent with one another, whichever way they go. For those reasons I have indicated to Mr Harrap that I propose to grant his request that this application for permission to appeal be adjourned generally with liberty to restore if so advised. Order:application for permission to appeal adjourned generally with liberty to restore if so advised; funded client assessment. BAILII: Copyright Policy | Disclaimers | Privacy Policy | Feedback | Donate to BAILII