Case No. UKUT-00118-(IAC)

76. At the eleventh hour, the first of the four Appellants, Mr Ahmed, was left unrepresented. The Tribunal during the morning of the hearing received a belated letter from his instructed solicitors asserting that Mr Ahmed had “ withdrawn his instructions ”, in circumstances where (it was said) the solicitors had been providing their services on a pro-bono basis and this Appellant had been “ paying for Counsel’s fees on a private basis ” but had no further resources to do so. There was no application to adjourn the hearing. As appears from the formal sections at the beginning of this judgment, we had the benefit of a skeleton argument from counsel previously instructed on behalf of this Appellant. This contained the following statements: “ Having had sight of the skeleton argument prepared for the other Appellants, the first Appellant wishes to adopt that skeleton without repetition herein … Any submissions made in this skeleton are in addition to the points therein. ” What followed did not differ in substance from the more extensive skeleton argument provided by counsel representing the other three Appellants. Insofar as there were any different emphases or nuances, these were duly taken into account by our careful reading of this written submission. We concluded that fairness did not require the adjournment of Mr Ahmed’s appeal of our own motion. 77. On a separate issue, we would recommend that the Secretary of State give careful consideration to the viability and desirability of making section 40 and deportation decisions jointly. If this is feasible, it will have the supreme merits of combined appeals to the tribunal (FtT) and a single hearing addressing all issues, together with reduced cost and delay.