Global Vision College Ltd, R (On the Application Of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

An immigration officer may check the veracity of a Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies through an interview and may act on material discrepancies. Such a check is not an additional criterion which a migrant must satisfy for leave to enter or remain. It therefore need not be contained in Immigration Rules laid before Parliament under section 3(2) of the Immigration Act 1971.

A distinction exists between a document which is invalid and one which is formally valid but has lost evidential value because its truthfulness is undermined. A CAS is strong, but not conclusive, evidence. Sponsor guidance regulates sponsors rather than imposing unlaid requirements on migrants.

The appellant college held a Tier 4 sponsor licence and applied for Highly Trusted Status. Its application was refused because 143 of 418 relevant student applications had been refused, giving a refusal rate of 34.21 per cent. Sixty-four refusals followed interview discrepancies between the students’ answers and the information in their CASs about assessment of English-language ability.

King J dismissed the college’s judicial-review claim: [2014] EWHC 205 (Admin). The college appealed only on the contention that the interview-based refusals imposed an unlawful requirement outside the Immigration Rules, contrary to Alvi. The central issue was whether checking the veracity of a CAS was an unlaid criterion for leave, or a permissible check on evidence supplied in support of an application.

Appeal dismissed. Beatson LJ, with whom Sharp and Arden LJJ agreed, affirmed the dismissal of the judicial-review claim.

1. The principle in R (Alvi) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] UKSC 33 requires any requirement which a migrant must satisfy to avoid refusal of leave to be contained in Immigration Rules laid under section 3(2) of the Immigration Act 1971. The interview questions at issue did not create such a requirement. They were a common-sense evidential check on the truthfulness of a document required by the Immigration Rules.

2. Entry-clearance officers are not required to accept applicants’ documents at face value. A CAS may be formally valid but become worthless as evidence where a material discrepancy between it and the applicant’s account undermines its veracity. The officer could therefore treat an appropriate discrepancy as disentitling the applicant to the points otherwise attributable to the CAS.

3. The distinction between validity and veracity was legally real. Failure to include mandatory information may make a CAS invalid under the Rules. By contrast, an interview-based check of whether its contents are true does not add a further condition of validity or an extra Rule. Guidance requiring sponsors to assess students properly regulates sponsors, not applicants, and may be considered by immigration officers without becoming an unlaid Rule.

4. Pokhriyal [2013] EWCA Civ 1568 was distinguishable. It concerned the Secretary of State second-guessing an educational provider’s academic judgment about academic progress. This case concerned a factual discrepancy bearing on the reliability of the CAS, not a challenge to an academic assessment.

5. The authorities also established that, in applying the less-than-20-per-cent refusal-rate criterion for Highly Trusted Status, the Secretary of State was under no public-law duty to re-examine every individual refusal. The Secretary of State was accordingly entitled to rely on the 64 refusals. The court’s view that a remittal might have been appropriate had those refusals been unlawful was not necessary to its decision.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Dismissed the college’s appeal and affirmed the Administrative Court’s dismissal of the judicial-review claim: [2014] EWCA Civ 659.
• High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division, Administrative Court King J dismissed the college’s challenge to the refusal of Highly Trusted Status: [2014] EWHC 205 (Admin).