SA v The Secretary of State for the Home Department

Open justice is the starting point for anonymity orders and reporting restrictions. The party seeking a derogation bears the burden of proving that it is justified. The court must intensely focus on the comparative importance of the specific Article 8 and Article 10 rights engaged. Open justice carries very substantial weight, but it does not have automatic priority. Anonymity may continue where focused and compelling medical evidence establishes a real risk that publicity will undermine a person’s psychological integrity, and non-disclosure is necessary and proportionate. Existing publicity and possible jigsaw identification do not necessarily make an order worthless or unworkable. For non-party disclosure, redacted judgments and skeleton arguments may provide a full and fair understanding of proceedings without requiring disclosure of evidence.

SA’s appeal against the revocation of her refugee status had been dismissed by the Court of Appeal on 28 March 2025: [2025] EWCA Civ 257. Associated Newspapers Limited, publisher of the Daily Mail, then applied to discharge anonymity orders made in the First-tier Tribunal, the Upper Tribunal and the Court of Appeal. It also sought an unredacted First-tier Tribunal judgment, evidence filed by SA, and the parties’ skeleton arguments.

SA resisted the application. The Secretary of State adopted a neutral position. The central issues were whether the current evidence justified continuing a derogation from open justice, having regard to Articles 8 and 10 of the ECHR, and what documents a non-party should receive.

The application was refused in part and granted in part. The Court of Appeal refused to discharge its anonymity order. The orders made by the Upper Tribunal and First-tier Tribunal therefore remained in force. Associated Newspapers Limited was entitled to redacted copies of the parties’ skeleton arguments, including in principle the Secretary of State’s skeleton argument, but was refused an unredacted First-tier Tribunal judgment and SA’s evidence.

1. Open justice was the starting point. The burden lay on SA, as the party seeking the derogation, to justify continued anonymity. The court had to give very substantial weight to open justice while carrying out an intense focus on the comparative importance of the specific Convention rights engaged.
2. The Article 8 threshold was high. The relevant question was whether disclosure created a real risk that SA’s physical or psychological integrity would be undermined, and whether the resulting interference with privacy was necessary and proportionate. The principles in PMC v A Local Health Board and Re S (A Child) were applied, with the Article 8 threshold described by reference to Tickle v Surrey County Council.
3. The asserted statutory and asylum-related grounds for anonymity no longer provided a factual foundation because SA’s account had been found false. The court therefore left open the correctness of the analysis in Ajao v Commerzbank AG and others. It refused a late adjournment because the existing evidence remained adequate and there was no evidence of a material change in SA’s condition.
4. SA’s chronic and incurable mental illness, lack of litigation capacity, and focused medical evidence linking publicity with serious psychiatric deterioration established a compelling risk. That risk outweighed the strong public interest in identification. Earlier publicity and possible jigsaw identification did not make the order worthless or unworkable.
5. Applying the principles in Cape Intermediate Holdings v Dring, the court concluded that redacted judgments and skeleton arguments gave the non-party a full and fair understanding of the issues. Disclosure of SA’s underlying evidence was unnecessary.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): In the present application, refused to discharge the anonymity order and refused access to the unredacted First-tier Tribunal judgment and SA’s evidence. Redacted skeleton arguments were to be disclosed.
• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): On 28 March 2025, dismissed SA’s appeal against the Upper Tribunal’s decision: [2025] EWCA Civ 257.
• Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber): Upheld the Secretary of State’s revocation of SA’s refugee status and allowed the Secretary of State’s appeal against the First-tier Tribunal’s grant of humanitarian protection.
• First-tier Tribunal: Found the revocation justified but granted humanitarian protection on a basis SA had not claimed. It made an anonymity direction on 1 September 2023, which the Upper Tribunal ordered to continue on 15 April 2024.
• Earlier asylum proceedings: An anonymity order made in 2008 remained in place after an application to lift it was refused in 2022.