Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber

[2024] UKUT 00144 (IAC)

Fecha: 08-Ago-2023

Decision and reasons

Decision and reasons

General principles relating to the good character requirement: section 6(1) BNA 1981

23.

At the date when the appellant applied to naturalise as a British citizen, section 6(1) BNA 1981 stated:

(1)

If, on an application for naturalisation as a British citizen made by a person of full age and capacity, the Secretary of State is satisfied that the applicant fulfils the requirements of Schedule 1 for naturalisation as such a citizen under this subsection, he may, if he thinks fit, grant to him a certificate of naturalisation as such a citizen.

24.

Schedule 1 sets out a series of substantive requirements for applications for naturalisation made under section 6(1). The relevant requirements for the purpose of this appeal are as follows:

(1)

Subject to paragraph 2, the requirements for naturalisation as a British citizen under section 6(1)are, in the case of any person who applies for it—

(a)

….

(b)

that he is of good character; and

(c)

….

25.

The relevant policy guidance will depend on the date when an applicant applied for naturalisation. The respondent has not identified what policy guidance was in place when the appellant applied in 2007. The Home Office bundle refers to Chapter 18 guidance, but did not include a copy. The current guidance appears to be ‘Nationality: good character requirement’ (Version 4.0) (23 July 2023). It includes guidance to Home Office caseworkers on how to assess a range of different factors in assessing whether a person is of good character, including criminality, behaviour relating to international crimes, dishonesty and deception in dealings with another government department and in relation to immigration matters.

26.

The courts have considered the requirement for a person to be of good character on a number of occasions and have found that there is no fundamental right to citizenship: R v SSHD ex parte Al-Fayed (No.2) [2000] EWCA Civ 523; [2001] Imm AR 134 [93] (‘Al-Fayed(No.2)’), R (AKH and others) v SSHD [2009] EWCA Civ 287 [10], and R (Thamby) v SSHD [2011] EWHC 1763 (Admin) [40].

27.

The test is whether the ‘Secretary of State is satisfied that’ the applicant is of good character and the burden is on the applicant to satisfy the Secretary of State that they are of good character: see SSHD v SK (Sri Lanka) [2012] EWCA Civ 16 [31].

28.

The BNA 1981 does not define good character. In Al-Fayed(No.2) the Court of Appeal made the following findings about the scope of the Secretary of State’s discretion in assessing whether a person is of good character:

‘41. In R v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex parte Fayed [1998] 1 WLR 763, 773F-G, Lord Woolf MR referred in passing to the requirement of good character as being a rather nebulous one. By that he meant that good character is a concept that cannot be defined as a single standard to which all rational beings would subscribe. He did not mean that it was incapable of definition by a reasonable decision-maker in relation to the circumstances of a particular case. Nor is it an objection that a decision may be based on a higher standard of good character than other reasonable decision-makers might have adopted. Certainly, it is no part of the function of the courts to discourage ministers of the Crown from adopting a high standard in matters which have been assigned to their judgment by Parliament, provided only that it is one which can reasonably be adopted in the circumstances.

29.

These principles have been reiterated in other decisions including R (Sandy) v SSHD [2023] EWHC 640 (Admin), R (Amin) v SSHD [2022] EWA Civ 439, R (Hiri) v SSHD [2014] EWHC 254 (Admin), and R (Amirifard) v SSHD [2013] EWHC 279 (Admin).

30.

A decision to grant a person citizenship status and a decision to deprive a person of citizenship status are both matters within the discretion of the Secretary of State, subject to the general principles of administrative law: see Al-Fayed (No.2) and SK (Sri Lanka) in relation to granting status and R (on the application of Begum) v Special Immigration Appeals Commission and Others [2021] UKSC 7, [2021] 2 WLR 556, Ciceri (deprivation of citizenship appeals: principles) [2021] UKUT 238 (IAC), and Chimi (deprivation appeals; scope and evidence) Cameroon [2023] UKUT 115 in relation to depriving status.