Thread by @AlasdairMack66

So here’s what happened to my client (let’s call her S) when the Home Office accused her of lying and put her through four years of hell.

S came to the UK to be with her husband. She isn’t a native English speaker & had to do an English language test, which she passed. 1/

A huge row arose in 2014 when the BBC broadcast allegations of fraud in English language testing centres. It seems likely that fraud was happening, but it’s the Home Office’s panicky response which has been criticised & which forms the background to S’s troubles. 2/

In 2012 S took an English test as part of an application to extend her stay. The people at the test centre tried to persuade her they’d do the test for her & she cd pass it off as her own. She refused & did the test properly. In 2015 after the scandal blew up… 3/

…the Home Office decided the centre where S did her test was associated with fraud. They interviewed S. She explained she’d bn asked to take part in fraud but refused.

The HO believed her –at least the interviewer did. We know this bc we later got their interview notes 4/

Did the HO let it drop?

They did not.

On the contrary. The HO refused S’s application in 2016 on the basis that her test certificate had been ‘fraudulently obtained’.
S appealed. 5/

The HO rep at the hearing was troubled: they saw S had credibly denied fraud & they cdn’t understand the refusal. (Again we know this bc much later we got their notes.)
Did they alert the judge to this?
They did not. They told the judge S had used fraud & the judge accepted it 6/

To make it worse S’s husband was taken badly ill 6 days before the hearing. S had spent those days at his bedside & was in a state. He was the only other person who cd confirm she spoke English well.

But S’s rep didn’t consider adjourning the hearing, nor did the judge 7/

Judge also criticised S for not filing evidence of his long-term medical needs, days after he’d been taken ill. She refused S’s appeal
S realised her reps were letting her down & found new ones: the outstanding Sean Mcloughlin at TRP (not On Here AFAIK) who in turn involved me 8/

Leaving out some boring procedural stuff (e.g. we had to seek permission to appeal a long way out of time) we appealed to the Upper Tribunal, at which point the Home Office produced the file note in which their previous rep had expressed misgivings about their conduct. 9/

But the UT judge didn’t think there’d been unfairness & rejected our challenge. We applied for permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal.

Things now got interesting bc we got the notes of S’s interview – the one where the interviewer believed her when she denied fraud 10/

We sent these to the Court & said they showed the whole appeal had bn unfair bc the HO hadn’t admitted that S had bn truthful or explained why she’d been refused on the basis she’d lied. We also said the 1st appeal hearing shdve bn adjourned bc of her husband’s sudden illness 11/

The Court was evidently concerned by all this because it granted us permission to appeal.

Now there’s a bit of a happy ending bc recently the Home Office has conceded the appeal and agreed to look at her case again – almost four years after they originally refused it. 12/

It’s a sorry tale, isn’t it.

S should recover some of the money she spent, but she & her husband won’t get back those four years of stress and anxiety over whether they were going to be allowed to live together. 13/

And yes, the same sort thing is also almost certainly happening to someone else – yesterday, today, next week, next month.

Misleading behaviour by the Home Office.

Poor representation.

Judges who won’t question what they’re told by the Home Office 14/14