[2025] UKUT 00349 (IAC)

Where a deprivation decision affects children, “the relevant legal obligations on the respondent” include those set out in section 55 of the 2009 Act. This provides in relevant part:

The guidance referred to at Section 55(3) is Every Child Matters: Change for Children: Statutory guidance to the UK Border Agency on making arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, issued in November 2009. In CAO v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2024] UKSC 32, the Supreme Court explained what that guidance requires, as follows:

“89.

The Guidance is intended to provide direction for practical decision-making as to the best interests of children in an area involving hundreds of cases each year. It cannot be interpreted to require procedural steps to be taken which have no practical bearing on the matter which arises for determination by a decision by the relevant immigration official. Further, the Guidance is drafted to give direction at a high level of abstraction, as is suitable to cover the very wide range of cases in which the immigration authoritiesmay encounter children in their work, rather than to provide detailed and specific instructions to case-workers. […] it leaves a good deal to the judgment of immigration officials when deciding how to give effect to its directions on the ground. It supplies a fairly broad set of parameters within which they should orientate their approach to decision-making in relation to a child, but with a considerable element of discretion for them to adapt to the particular circumstances of a specific case […].”

When considering the impact of a deprivation decision on a person’s children, it is necessary to consider only the reasonably foreseeable consequences of the deprivation decision itself, and not the consequences of any subsequent decision about whether to grant a period of leave or require them to leave the UK. See: Aziz & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 1884. In most cases, this will mean that the only relevant consequences of deprivation will be those during the “limbo” period between the deprivation order coming into effect and the subsequent decision on leave to remain. There may be circumstances in which there will be significant consequences for children regardless of whether a parent is granted further leave, but those would need to be identified and cannot be presumed. There could, for example, be consequences of a parent being made stateless that would not come to an end with a grant of further leave, but that issue does not arise in this appeal.

In Hysaj at [117-118], the Upper Tribunal emphasised that “[s]ignificant weight is to be placed upon the public interest in a person who has obtained British citizenship through fraud, false representation or concealment of a material fact being deprived of that status” and expressed the view that where statelessness is not an issue, “it is likely to be only in a rare case” that the consequences of deprivation for an individual and their family will outweigh that public interest. Nonetheless, as in any decision regarding the best interests of children or article 8, an individualized assessment is still required. See, e.g.: Zoumbas v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] UKSC 74 at [10]. It would therefore be a mistake to apply the outcome of the balancing test in Hysaj as if it established a general rule that, for example, section 17 of the Children’s Act 1989 means that no detailed enquiry into the circumstances of any child in England is required before deciding whether depriving a parent of British citizenship is appropriate or proportionate. On the contrary, in reaching its conclusion dismissing the appeal in Hysaj, the Upper Tribunal considered a range of evidence about the family’s circumstances, including their mother’s right to work and employability, their accommodation, and the public benefits that would be available to them.