Ali Ahmed Agha, R (on the application of) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department

For an inaccurate document to be a false document under paragraph V3.6(a) of Appendix V to the Immigration Rules, dishonesty must have occurred in its creation, although it need not have been committed or known by the applicant. A factual inaccuracy alone does not establish that requirement where innocent error is a realistic possibility.

A refusal must engage with whether the inaccuracy resulted from dishonest conduct and give the applicant sufficient reasons, or the gist of the case, for treating the document as false. A pre-decision interview is not invariably required, and a properly conducted review may consider further evidence.

The applicant, a Pakistani national, sought entry clearance to visit his brother. The Entry Clearance Officer refused the application under paragraph V3.6 of Appendix V to the Immigration Rules because his passport bore a Pakistani arrival stamp dated one month before his actual return from the United Kingdom.

The applicant accepted that the stamp and his application form recorded the wrong date, but contended that the stamp could have resulted from an innocent administrative error. Following an unsuccessful review by an Entry Clearance Manager, he sought judicial review. The central issue was whether the respondent could lawfully treat an inaccurate date stamp as a false document without addressing dishonesty and giving reasons for that conclusion.

1. The judicial review application succeeded. The refusal and the subsequent review were quashed because they did not lawfully establish that the passport was a false document for paragraph V3.6(a) of Appendix V to the Immigration Rules.

2. Applying AA (Nigeria) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] EWCA Civ 773, a false document is one whose creation involved dishonesty. The dishonesty may be that of a third party and need not be known to the applicant. The rule therefore does not treat every document containing factually inaccurate information as false.

3. An incorrect date in a passport stamp did not, of itself, reveal dishonesty. It could have resulted from an error in setting the stamp or in checking it. The respondent therefore had to consider whether a person had dishonestly caused the incorrect endorsement, rather than merely note the discrepancy.

4. Neither the refusal notice nor the review gave reasons addressing that essential issue. They proceeded on the erroneous basis that an incorrect date alone made the passport false. The undisclosed verification report could not supply reasons that were absent from the decision, and in any event required explanation as to how the altered date could have concealed the applicant’s travel history.

5. There was no general legal requirement to interview the applicant before making a deception decision. A properly conducted Entry Clearance Manager review could rationally consider further evidence. The Tribunal did not need to determine the standard or burden of proof; it observed that the criminal standard would not have applied.

6. The respondent’s decisions of 6 September 2015 and 23 November 2015 were quashed. The respondent was ordered to pay the applicant’s summarily assessed costs of £12,218. Permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal was refused.

• Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber): On judicial review, the Tribunal quashed the Entry Clearance Officer’s refusal of 6 September 2015 and the Entry Clearance Manager’s review of 23 November 2015.
• Permission stage: Permission was initially refused on the papers, then granted after an oral hearing because the absence of information supporting the assertion that the entry stamp was forged arguably rendered the refusal unlawful.