CA-2025-002338 - [2025] EWCA Civ 1264

This is a public law case. The first question, therefore, is whether there is a serious issue to be tried as to whether or not the Secretary of State would be acting lawfully in seeking to remove CTK on the facts of this case.

We were told that the Competent Authority is a part of the Home Office, staffed by people who are specialists in making decisions about claims of human trafficking. The Competent Authority did not, in the decision, purport to depart from the statutory guidance; still less did it articulate a good reason for doing that. The Competent Authority faithfully followed the statutory guidance by offering CTK the opportunity to apply for a reconsideration within 30 days.

So the decision by the Secretary of State’s own specialist staff, the Competent Authority, was, in this respect, in accordance with the guidance. Yet before the Judge, the Secretary of State, in effect, repudiated that aspect of the decision and insisted to the Judge that CTK must be removed, in breach of her own published policy, and in breach of an unambiguous indication by the Competent Authority that CTK could request reconsideration of the Competent Authority’s decision within 30 days. It is strongly arguable both that the Secretary of State has no power to repudiate a lawful decision made by her own specialist civil servants, and made in accordance with her own published statutory guidance, and that, by doing so, she acted unlawfully.

Against that background, the first question for us is whether there is any error of law or of principle in the Judge’s understandably short judgment, or in the order which he made. The judgment and the order reflect two of his responses to this case, as it evolved during the hearing, which he expressed during oral argument (see paragraphs 21 and 23 above). Those were, first, that the Competent Authority’s own invitation in the decision to CTK to make further representations “might tip the balance”; and secondly, his response, when he was told that the Competent Authority could not consider any such representations if CTK was in France, that that “forced [his] hand”. In our judgment there is no error of principle in the Judge’s approach. If anything he could have gone further than he did. There was no relevant factual dispute. The Judge, in the circumstances of this case, could not have been criticised for deciding that there was “no credible dispute that the strength of one party’s case” and that it was “disproportionate to that of the other party”, and to take that into account as indicating that he should grant the injunction. As things stand, there is no error of law or of principle in the approach which he did take.