CA-2024-001818 - [2025] EWCA Civ 1273

Ground 2 of the Amended Grounds of Appeal reads, so far as material:

“The Administrative Court erred in holding that there was no relevant difference in treatment, for the purposes of Article 14 ECHR, between refugee children seeking to reunite with their parents and minor siblings on the one hand and adult refugees seeking to reunite with their partners and minor children on the other; and/or in holding that refugee children seeking to reunite with their parents and siblings were not in a relevantly different situation from adult refugees seeking to reunite with their parents and siblings; and therefore in failing to consider the issue of justification.”

Thus the Claimant continues to rely on both primary and Thlimmenos discrimination.

In her Respondent’s Notice the Secretary of State relied so far as necessary on her case that any differential treatment was justified.

I will take the differential treatment and justification issues in turn.