CA-2024-001892 - [2025] EWCA Civ 987

This appeal by a foreign national offender against an order for his deportation involves the construction of s 117C of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which states:

“117C Article 8: additional considerations in cases involving foreign criminals

(1)

The deportation of foreign criminals is in the public interest.

(2)

The more serious the offence committed by a foreign criminal, the greater is the public interest in deportation of the criminal.

(3)

In the case of a foreign criminal (“C”) who has not been sentenced to a period of imprisonment of four years or more, the public interest requires C's deportation unless Exception 1 or Exception 2 applies.

(4)

Exception 1 applies where—

(a)

C has been lawfully resident in the United Kingdom for most of C's life,

(b)

C is socially and culturally integrated in the United Kingdom, and

(c)

there would be very significant obstacles to C's integration into the country to which C is proposed to be deported.

(5)

Exception 2 applies where C has a genuine and subsisting relationship with a qualifying partner, or a genuine and subsisting parental relationship with a qualifying child, and the effect of C's deportation on the partner or child would be unduly harsh.

(6)

In the case of a foreign criminal who has been sentenced to a period of imprisonment of at least four years, the public interest requires deportation unless there are very compelling circumstances, over and above those described in Exceptions 1 and 2.

(7)

The considerations in subsections (1) to (6) are to be taken into account where a court or tribunal is considering a decision to deport a foreign criminal only to the extent that the reason for the decision was the offence or offences for which the criminal has been convicted.”

The Appellant is a Zambian national born on 6 June 1968. He arrived in the UK in April 1983 aged 14 years and 10 months. On 11 February 1992 he was convicted of attempted fraud and sentenced to three years and six months’ imprisonment. He was warned by the Secretary of State of the risk of deportation. On 28 October 1996 he was convicted of two offences of theft and sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment. He was also convicted of theft of a motor vehicle and sentenced to a consecutive term of 15 months’ imprisonment.

On 22 May 1998 he was notified that he was liable to be deported because of his offending. His appeal against the notification was dismissed in March 2000 but no deportation order was made. The immigration judge who dismissed the appeal said:

“The tenor of the Appellant’s statement is such that to my mind he does not squarely address his criminal history and accept it. He appeared to me to be a man who was duplicitous and whose behaviour in the past had, at the very least, been manipulative. He certainly did not appear to be a reformed character. To my mind, if ever there was a case in which it could be said that the criteria of paragraph 374 were obviously not, by any stretch of the imagination, met this is it”.

Following a further conviction for offences of dishonesty in 2008, the Appellant was again notified of his liability to be deported, and in February 2010 notice of a decision to deport him was served. In May 2011 an immigration judge allowed an appeal against deportation to the extent that the Secretary of State was required to make a further decision. On 12 March 2013 the Respondent made a decision to deport the Appellant pursuant to section 3 of the Immigration Act 1971 because of his criminal offending. Following a successful appeal to the First Tier Tribunal (“the FTT”) the appellant was granted leave to remain until 15 April 2016.

In 2014 the appellant stood trial in the Crown Court at Manchester before His Honour Judge Atherton and a jury on five charges of conspiracy to defraud. He was convicted and received a total sentence of 6 years’ imprisonment on 23 April 2014. The offences had been committed in 2007 and 2008.

The sentencing judge’s remarks make clear the seriousness of the offences. They involved fraudulent attempts to obtain loans on properties that were not owned by the appellant or his co-defendants. The total value of loans obtained was said to be £3.5 million, with a further £3.3 million in loans applied for but not obtained. The sentencing judge, however, accepted that there was an element of double counting in the figure for loans obtained, and concluded that the value of loans unrepaid amounted to over £1 million.

A deportation order was again made on 3 February 2016 following the 2014 convictions but the Home Office agreed to reconsider it following submissions from the Appellant. However, on 1 November 2016 the Respondent made a further decision to maintain the deportation order and rejected the Appellant’s human rights claim. The decision is 17 pages long and sets out the reasons for the decision in considerable detail. The narrative includes 10 convictions previous to the one which led to the sentence of six years’ imprisonment.