Etti-Adegbola v Secretary of State for the Home Department

For an adult child and parent or siblings to enjoy family life under Article 8(1), there must be dependency going beyond normal emotional ties. Cohabitation, mutual household assistance and ordinary emotional support may be insufficient where they are no more than the normal incidents of family life between adults.

In assessing proportionality under Article 8(2), an appellate court will not interfere merely because the tribunal made unjustified or over-vigorous comments. The decision stands if sustainable factual findings independently justify the conclusion that removal is proportionate.

A Nigerian national appealed against the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal’s reconsideration decision of 13 January 2009, which had dismissed his human-rights appeal against the refusal of leave to remain.

He had lived with his mother and adult brother in the United Kingdom for many years and relied on their close emotional relationship and mutual support. The tribunal found that Article 8(1) family life was not engaged, but accepted that he had a private life. It held that removal to Nigeria was proportionate.

The central issues were whether the adult family relationship constituted family life for Article 8(1), and whether defects in the tribunal’s reasoning undermined its proportionality conclusion under Article 8(2).

1. Appeal dismissed unanimously. Pill LJ held, with whom Arden and Etherton LJJ agreed, that the tribunal was entitled to find that Article 8(1) family life was not engaged.

2. The binding domestic approach required further elements of dependency beyond normal emotional ties before an adult child’s relationship with a parent or siblings acquired Article 8 protection as family life. The appellant, his mother and adult brother lived together and assisted each other, but the tribunal could permissibly treat that support as no more than normal family conduct. Cohabitation and emotional closeness did not compel a finding of family life.

3. Pill LJ nevertheless reserved his position on the breadth of that approach. In ordinary language, family life does not necessarily end when a child reaches majority. Arden LJ similarly stressed that the existence of family life between a parent and an adult child depends on the facts and does not automatically determine on majority.

4. The tribunal had made some unjustified and over-vigorous adverse comments, including comments about the appellant’s knowledge of his immigration position and his regard for the law. Those defects did not undermine the material findings that he was an adult in good health, had qualifications, could work in Nigeria, and could receive support from family there. Those findings were sufficient to justify the conclusion that interference with his private life was proportionate under Article 8(2).

5. Further, if family life had been engaged, the tribunal’s findings and its conclusion that removal would not breach the appellant’s family or private life would also have supported the same proportionality outcome.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): dismissed the appeal in [2009] EWCA Civ 1319 .
• Asylum and Immigration Tribunal: on reconsideration, dismissed the appeal against the Secretary of State’s refusal of leave to remain on human-rights grounds on 13 January 2009.