Rahim Shah & Anor. v Secretary of State for the Home Department

A challenge to cancellation of student leave for breach of a 20-hour work restriction is governed by ordinary judicial review principles. The court does not independently determine whether the underlying admissions were true. It asks whether the decision was rational and lawfully reached. Clear admissions may provide a sufficient basis for cancellation, even where the claimant later disputes their accuracy. Procedural fairness requires careful and comprehensible questioning, particularly where English is not the claimant’s first language. There is no general duty to contact an employer before acting where the available admissions are clear. Different treatment of other cases does not, without more, establish unlawfulness or invalidate the evidence relied upon.

The claimants, Rahim Shah and Fawad Anwar, held student leave permitting work for no more than 20 hours per week during term time. On 27 September 2021 the Secretary of State cancelled their leave after immigration officers recorded admissions indicating substantially excessive working hours. The claimants challenged the decisions, alleging unreliable or contaminated evidence, unfair questioning, inadequate cautions, failures to contact employers and inconsistencies in the officers’ evidence. They also claimed damages for unlawful detention, which depended on success in the judicial review claims.

The central issues were whether the decisions were irrational or procedurally unfair, and whether the evidence available to the decision-makers justified cancellation.

1. Applicable approach. The challenge was an ordinary judicial review, governed by Wednesbury principles, rather than a precedent-fact inquiry. The court therefore did not decide independently whether the admissions were true, but whether they were a safe and rational basis for the decisions. This followed Giri v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] 1 WLR 4418.
2. Reliability and procedural fairness. Procedural fairness requires questioning to be carefully conducted, with clear and precise questions, especially where the person questioned does not have English as a first language. The PRONTO records showed careful questioning and apparently unambiguous admissions. Rahim Shah had an interpreter, while Fawad Anwar said he did not need one. The general assertions that the interviews were incomplete, distorted or intimidating did not undermine the recorded admissions.
3. Evidence and further inquiries. The decisions could properly be based on the admissions and the supporting information available at the time. There was no obligation to obtain a witness statement from Bilal Majeed, because the decision concerning Mr Shah rested on his own admissions. Nor was there a duty to contact the employers before cancellation. Later employer letters and subsequent inquiries could not undermine the original decisions and, in any event, were of doubtful reliability.
4. Other criticisms. The later settlement of claims by two other migrants did not create a right to equal treatment or undermine the evidence in these cases. The Devaseelan principle did not assist because this was not a later decision in the same immigration history. The use of statements bearing the criminal-proceedings form of statement of truth was unobjectionable because the statements had been disclosed as documents, not prepared as witness statements for these proceedings.
5. Disposition. The cancellations were lawful. The detention claims consequently failed. The judicial review claims were dismissed, with the parties invited to agree the form of order and costs.

First-instance judicial review proceedings. No earlier appellate decision in the same litigation is stated.