Amin v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] EWCA Civ 627
LADY JUSTICE ARDEN:
[1]This is a hard case, but in my judgment the application must fail. The 2013 application was accompanied by a covering letter which described the applicant as a self-employed IT field engineer and the only director of his company, namely 12 Services & Solutions Limited. In his form, under a column requiring details of his business and employer, he inserted the name of his company and he sought to rely on the retained profits of the company.[2]However, the difficulty is that even if I read the two together there is no information as to any separate business as a self-employed engineer. The Secretary of State was in my judgment entitled to take the view that it was not shown that he could be self-employed and a director of his own company, and Mr Balroop has not argued that today. Since he was an employed person he could not rely on the earnings because they were the property of the company, and although Mr Balroop has argued cogently that he ought to have been treated as self-employed as he happens to have been in 2011, the fact is that there was no basis on which the Secretary of State could treat him as self-employed for the purposes of this application.[3]I have considered whether the Secretary of State should have made further enquiries of HMRC, but in my judgment the reference in the decision letter is not to any communication with HMRC but simply a reliance on their general practice, and the Secretary of State cannot be required to investigate something of which information was not given.[4]The alternative point is whether the Secretary of State should have made some enquiry of the appellant, but that has not been suggested to me as the letter has not been relied on today and it is difficult to see why the Secretary of State should do that when the Secretary of State was not given information to suggest that there was a separate business of which he could be self-employed as opposed to employed. In those circumstances, as I say with regret, I do not consider there is any arguable point of law for which I could properly give permission and therefore I must refuse the application.