CSG, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Home Department

For interim relief and permission to bring judicial review, the claimant must show a viable public law challenge with a realistic prospect of success. Judicial review is supervisory and does not permit the court to reconsider the merits or substitute its own decision.

A decision-maker may reasonably reject a reconsideration request where the claimant identifies alleged inaccuracies in an earlier account but provides no corrected account. A medical report recording that no scars were noted does not, without more, establish that no physical examination occurred. Further materials must be assessed in context; their existence does not require specific treatment in the reasons where they have been considered and do not disclose a vitiating error.

The claimant, an asylum seeker, challenged the Secretary of State’s refusal to reconsider an adverse reasonable-grounds decision under the modern slavery referral process. He also sought urgent interim relief to prevent his removal to France under the UK-France Agreement.

The challenge alleged material errors of fact, failure to consider relevant matters and inadequate reasons. The alleged errors concerned the absence of an amended account and the treatment of evidence concerning marks on the claimant’s body and a rule 35 report. The court considered the claim alongside the application for interim relief and determined whether it raised a viable issue with a realistic prospect of success.

1. Outcome. The application for interim relief was refused and permission for judicial review was refused. The claim lacked legal viability and raised no triable issue.
2. Physical examination. The decision-maker was entitled to treat the claimant’s statement that he had been unable to show marks to the clinician as unexplained. The rule 35 report’s record that no scars were noted indicated that the clinician had looked but had not observed scars. It did not indicate that no physical examination had taken place. Later difficulties in arranging a video examination could not render the earlier decision unlawful.
3. Alternative account. The claimant’s reconsideration request identified alleged inaccuracies in the recorded account but supplied no amended account or explanation of what had actually been said. The decision-maker was entitled to regard that omission as significant. The rule 35 report and solicitors’ letter contained further accounts of forced labour and violence, but also introduced inconsistencies. Those materials had been referenced and considered. The reasons were not legally inadequate merely because they did not address every detail specifically.
4. Supervisory jurisdiction. The court applied the principles that judicial review is not a merits appeal and that the court has no substitutionary jurisdiction. Even applying anxious scrutiny, there was no realistic prospect of establishing an unreasonable decision, material error of fact, failure to consider an obviously material matter or legally inadequate reasons.
5. The court distinguished the urgent interim relief approach in R (CTK) v SSHD because, although there were similarities, the present case was not an apparent abrogation case involving a policy promise that had not been delivered. The challenge concerned the lawfulness of a decision refusing reconsideration.