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

Claims combining public-law challenges with statutory discrimination or damages claims should not be treated as academic merely because the challenged decision has been withdrawn or detention has ended, where damages remain outstanding or there is a significant risk of repetition.

Transfer from the Administrative Court to the County Court depends on the factors in CPR Part 30.3, applied through CPR Part 54.20. The Administrative Court is generally preferable where the issues are novel, complex, factually manageable on written evidence, raise wider public-law questions, or are connected with claims that must remain there. An individual claim may also provide the factual context necessary to determine a wider systemic challenge.

The claimant, a mentally impaired national of Niger acting through a litigation friend, challenged a deportation decision made under section 3(5)(a) of the Immigration Act 1971 and his subsequent immigration detention. He alleged procedural unfairness, breaches of the reasonable-adjustments duty under the Equality Act 2010, unlawful detention and breaches of the Human Rights Act 1998.

The Secretary of State sought to amend her defence, dismiss parts of the claim as academic, and transfer the discrimination and damages claims to the County Court. The central issues were whether the claims remained live, whether late statutory arguments should be admitted, and which court was the appropriate forum.

1. Applications dismissed. Grounds 1–3 were neither academic nor suitable for transfer to the County Court. The trial was adjourned because the Secretary of State’s late amendments made it impractical to continue immediately.
2. A withdrawn deportation decision did not make the procedural-fairness challenge academic. There remained a significant risk that a further deportation decision would be made. In any event, the associated Equality Act claim included an extant damages claim.
3. The reasonable-adjustments claim could be brought in the Administrative Court. Although discrimination claims against public authorities will often be better suited to the County Court, particularly where contested facts require oral evidence and cross-examination, the transfer decision must apply CPR Part 54.20 and CPR Part 30.3.
4. Relevant factors favouring the Administrative Court included the absence of substantial contested factual issues, novel or complex public-law questions, related public-law claims that could only be heard there, and wider public importance. The statutory-exclusion issue under paragraph 16 of Schedule 3 to the Equality Act 2010 was sufficiently novel and important to justify retention in that court.
5. The claim was adequately pleaded. A reasonable-adjustments claim necessarily identifies a provision, criterion or practice, and the Court of Appeal’s decision in R (VC) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] 1 WLR 4781 established that the duty may require anticipatory adjustments for a class as well as adjustments in individual cases.
6. Ground 2 remained live because the false-imprisonment and human-rights damages claims depended on whether the detention was unlawful. The retrospective effect and human-rights compatibility of section 44 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025, together with the application of the modified Hardial Singh principles after section 12 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, raised novel and important Administrative Court issues.
7. The reasoning in R (ZA (Pakistan)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 146 concerned the ordinary case after detention had ended and did not require transfer here. The Administrative Court could adapt its procedures if oral evidence or cross-examination became necessary.
8. Ground 3 was also live because damages remained claimed. Unlike the generalised claim in R (Medical Justice) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWHC 2368, this individual claim supplied concrete factual context and could affect future treatment of similarly situated persons.