SA v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 1065

[2025] EWCA Civ 1065Case No CA-2024-001383-B
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
(IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER)
Upper Tribunal Judges Blundell and Kebede
UI-2023-004680
Venue Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London, WC2A 2LLDate 01/08/2025
Before
LORD JUSTICE BAKERLORD JUSTICE ARNOLDLADY JUSTICE ANDREWS
Between
SA (by her Litigation Friend,Appellant and RespondentDAVID WEDGWOOD)Appellant- and –ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPERS LIMITED Interested Party and Applicant
Sarah Palin (instructed by Associated Newspapers Ltd) for Interested Party/ApplicantJay Gajjar and Ahmad Badar (instructed by SAJ Legal Solicitors) for SA/RespondentThe Secretary of State for Home Department, an Interested Party to the application, did not appear and was not representedHearing Hearing date: 17 July 2025
Approved JudgmentThis judgment was handed down remotely at 10.30am on 1 st August 2025 by circulation to the parties or their representatives by e-mail and by release to the National Archives..............................
[1]On 20 March 2025, a constitution of this court comprising Lord Justice Arnold, Lord Justice Phillips and myself heard an appeal against a decision of the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) (“the UT”) upholding the decision of the Secretary of State for the Home Department (“SSHD”) to revoke the appellant’s status as a refugee under paragraph 339AB of the Immigration Rules. The UT allowed the SSHD’s appeal against the First-tier Tribunal’s decision that, although the SSHD was justified in making the revocation order, the appellant was entitled to humanitarian protection on a basis which she had not claimed (and, indeed, continued to positively disavow). On 28 March 2025, we handed down our reserved judgments dismissing that appeal: [2025] EWCA Civ 257.[2]The appellant was anonymised in the judgments and referred to, as she was in both the lower tribunals, by the initials “SA”. As I explained at [14]:
“The appellant is a protected party who is represented in these proceedings by a solicitor who was appointed by the Court of Protection as her Deputy on 8 June 2018. She has suffered from serious mental health issues for many years, and in consequence she lacks the capacity to litigate. For this and other reasons there are anonymity orders in place. I shall refer to her, as she was referred to in the tribunals below, as “SA”.”
[3]On 24 March 2025, Associated Newspapers Ltd (“ANL”), the publishers of the Daily Mail newspaper, issued an application to discharge all the anonymity orders made in these proceedings (“the revocation appeal proceedings”), namely:(i) an anonymity direction made in the First-tier Tribunal (F-tT) on 1 September 2023 pursuant to rule 13(1)(b) of the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (IAC) Rules 2014;(ii) the order of the UT dated 15 April 2024 made pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules (IAC) 2008 following their reconsideration of the FtT’s order, that “the anonymity order made by the First-tier Tribunal is to continue in force”;(iii) the order made by me on 9 August 2024 when I granted SA permission to appeal on the papers, reconfirming the anonymity direction. My direction was in these terms:
“Anonymity order made in the Tribunal is maintained. The name of the Appellant shall appear as SA and any material from which she may be identified should be omitted from any document (including skeleton arguments) which may become available to the public.”
[4]I should also mention a fourth order which was made by the then President of the FtT, Judge Michael Clements, on 4 July 2022, refusing an application made by a person with whom SA (through her Deputy) was engaged in civil litigation, to lift an anonymity order made on 22 December 2008 by the FtT which had allowed her appeal in earlier immigration proceedings which led to SA being granted refugee status in the first place (“the asylum appeal”).[5]ANL also seeks disclosure, under the principles established in Cape Intermediate Holdings v Dring [2019] UKSC 38; [2020] AC 629 of(i) an unredacted version of the FtT’s decision;(ii) the evidence SA filed in relation to her appeal to the FtT against the revocation order; and(iii) the skeleton arguments filed by the parties in the tribunal proceedings and on this appeal. Mr Jay Gajjar, who appeared with Mr Ahmad Badar on behalf of SA to resist ANL’s application, indicated that her Deputy would not oppose disclosure of the skeleton arguments, (albeit in an anonymised and redacted format, consistent with the anonymity orders being maintained). However, Mr Gajjar questioned whether there was justification for granting a non-party access to the evidence filed in support of SA’s appeal to the FtT.[6]Following directions given by the court for the hearing of ANL’s application, the Government Legal Department wrote a letter indicating that the SSHD adopted a strictly neutral stance. In the light of that indication, Lord Justice Arnold and I directed that the SSHD need not attend the hearing.[7]In her oral submissions Ms Sarah Palin, counsel for ANL, sensibly focused on my order, because it was indisputable that if that order were discharged the orders made by the tribunals below could no longer remain in force. In any event, as Lord Justice Arnold pointed out in the course of the hearing, the time for challenging the anonymity orders made in the FtT and the UT on their merits (e.g. on the grounds of an alleged misdirection as to the law) has long since passed. The issue at the heart of this application is whether in the present circumstances and on the evidence as it now stands, there is a sufficient justification for continuing to derogate from the fundamental principle of open justice.[8]It is possible to dispense with many of the reasons said to justify such derogation without examining the arguments in detail, because they have been overtaken by events. SA was initially afforded the protection that is usually granted to persons claiming asylum or humanitarian protection on the basis of what they claim to be a well-founded fear of death, severe ill-treatment or persecution on return to the home state, and the Presidential guidance that applies to making orders for anonymity in the FtT and UT was followed in that regard. Both the FtT and the UT expressly justified making the order in the current proceedings because of a belief that SA was entitled to lifetime anonymity under section 1(1) of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 by virtue of her claim to have been the victim of forced child marriage in Saudi Arabia.[9]Ms Palin took issue with that approach. She contended that section 1(1) of the 1992 Act did not apply because on the proper interpretation of that section, SA had not made a qualifying allegation of sexual assault or human trafficking, relying on the decision of Kerr J, sitting in the Employment Appeal Tribunal, in Ajao v Commerzbank AG and others [2024] EAT 13; [2024] ICR 644. Ms Palin also relied upon the limited territorial reach of human trafficking offences to which that Act applies if the alleged perpetrator is a non-UK national, referring to section 2 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Nevertheless, in answer to questions from the court, Ms Palin conceded that if someone claims to be the victim of such behaviour, wherever it occurred and regardless of the nationality of the alleged perpetrator, this would be a factor that a tribunal would be entitled to take into account when considering whether to make an anonymity order to protect their right to respect for their privacy.[10]We do not need to consider whether Kerr J’s analysis in Ajao is correct. Any observations about that are best left to a case in which that issue arises for determination. The short answer to any claim to continue the reporting restrictions on either of the two bases I have identified is that SA’s account, which the original panel of the FtT in the asylum appeal believed, has been shown to be false on compelling evidence, and the FtT and UT have so found. That removes the factual foundation upon which any such justification was based.[11]Although Mr Gajjar did try to rely on the concession made by the SSHD in the FtT that there would be a risk on return to Yemen, which has been found to be SA’s true country of origin, there are no plans to return her to Yemen, there is no claim for asylum or humanitarian protection in respect of Yemen, and it seems unlikely that such a claim will ever materialise because apparently SA still insists, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that she is a Saudi national. In any event the risks in Yemen apply across the board and are not personal to SA or her circumstances. They are a result of the dire and tragic situation arising from the ongoing conflict in that country. The publication of her identity would have no bearing on those risks. That means that the only basis on which the continuation of the order could be justified is the risk posed to SA’s mental health were she to be identified, which was the reason why I made the order that I did.[12]For the reasons set out in this judgment, having given careful consideration to the competing arguments, I would refuse this application. On the evidence that is currently before the Court, when balancing SA’s right to respect for her private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“ECHR”) against the rights of the media and the public to freedom of expression under Article 10 ECHR, I am satisfied by Mr Gajjar that the balance comes down firmly in favour of maintaining the order for anonymity. That is so notwithstanding the arguments advanced by Ms Palin which centred around the fact that a substantial amount of information about SA is already in the public domain. In my judgment, non-disclosure of her identity is still necessary to secure the proper administration of justice and in order to protect her interests, see CPR 39.2(4).

RELEVANT LEGAL PRINCIPLES

[13]There was no dispute between the parties as to the legal principles or as to the approach to be applied. The starting point is open justice. There is a helpful summary of the requirements of open justice, by reference to the main authorities on that subject, in the recent judgment of Sir Geoffrey Vos MR (with whom Warby LJ and King LJ agreed) in Tickle v Surrey County Council [2025] EWCA Civ 42; [2025] 2 WLR 714 (“Tickle”) at [43] to [50]. There is no need to repeat it here.[14]We were referred to Nicklin J’s observations in PMC v A Local Health Board [2024] EWHC 2969 (KB) (“PMC”) at [26] and [27]:
“26. The starting point is open justice; that the administration of justice takes place in public, and the public have the right to attend all hearings held in open court. Allied to this is the corresponding right to publish reports of those proceedings. Historically that role was discharged by the press, but is now one embraced by many others who publish reports of proceedings in many different forms, e.g. articles published on blogs, academic commentary, and on social media. 27. Consistent with the open justice principle, the general rule is that the names of the parties to the proceedings will be made public; in the documents from the Court’s records that are required to be open to the public, in the hearings that take place in open court and in the orders and judgments of the Court. There is no general exception for case where private matters are in issue, or where a party would prefer that his/her name or details of the proceedings were not revealed: Scott v Scott [1913] AC 417, 463 per Lord Atkinson; R v Evesham Justices ex parte McDonagh [1988] QB 553, 562A-C; R v Legal Aid Board ex parte Kaim Todner (A Firm) [1999] QB 966, 978g. Ordinarily “the collateral impact that [the Court] process has on those affected is part of the price to be paid for open justice and the freedom of the press to report fairly and accurately on judicial proceedings held in public”: Khuja v Times Newspapers Ltd [2019] AC 161 [34(2)] per Lord Sumption.”
[15]Immigration and Asylum cases are no exception. That is confirmed in the Guidance (Court of Appeal: Anonymity in Asylum and Immigration Cases) [2022] 1 WLR 2023. It is unnecessary to quote extensively from that practice guidance, but paragraph 2 makes it plain that:
“the starting point for the consideration of anonymity orders is open justice. This principle promotes the rule of law and public confidence in the legal system. Given the importance of open justice, appellants should generally expect to be named in proceedings in the Court of Appeal. Any departure from this principle will need to be justified.”
Paragraph 4 provides that:
“The Court of Appeal will continue its long-standing practice of anonymising judgments in most appeals raising asylum or other international protection claims, provided it is satisfied that the publication of the names of appellants in such cases may create avoidable risks for them in the countries from which they have come.”
[16]Derogations from open justice, including orders for anonymity and concomitant reporting restrictions, can be justified as necessary on two principal grounds: maintenance of the administration of justice, and harm to other legitimate interests. The present case falls within the latter category. Where a party to litigation seeks such an order on the basis of an argued interference with a competing right under the ECHR, the court must carry out a balancing exercise with “an intense focus on the comparative importance of the specific rights being claimed in the individual case”, per Lord Steyn in Re S (A Child) [2005] AC 593 at [17].[17]It is for the party seeking the derogation from open justice to satisfy the court that it is justified, not for the media or the public to show why the name of a litigant should be made freely available and able to be published (see e.g. PMC at [44].)[18]In another passage in PMC, which was expressly approved by the Master of the Rolls in Tickle, Nicklin J said:
“Whilst, in a very broad sense, in assessing the engaged convention rights on any application for a derogation from open justice, the Court is carrying out a “balance” between them, the scales do not start evenly balanced. The Court must start from the position that very substantial weight must be accorded to open justice. Any balance starts with a very clear presumption in favour of open justice unless and until that is displaced and outweighed by a sufficiently countervailing justification. That is not to give a presumptive priority to Article 10 (or open justice), it is simply a recognition of the context in which the Re S balance is being carried out.”
[19]We were told that the decision in PMC had been appealed to this Court and that the appeal was due to be heard imminently. However, given that the facts of that case are very different from this, and the principles enunciated by Nicklin J do not appear to be in dispute, it seems to me to be most unlikely that the outcome of that appeal could have any bearing on the issues that we have to decide.[20]In Tickle the Master of the Rolls accepted at [56] that the Article 8 threshold could, in a normal case, be reached if there were a real risk that a person’s physical or psychological integrity might be undermined, citing two decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, Kaboglu and Oran v Turkey (unreported) 30 October 2018 and Von Hannoverv Germany (2004] 40 EHRR 1. That is an important consideration in the present case, for reasons I shall explain.[21]Ms Palin submitted that the anonymity orders made in the present case represent a serious and unjustified interference with the Article 10 ECHR rights of the media and the public. She submitted that those rights were enhanced by the media coverage of other litigation in which SA was involved. Ms Palin concentrated in particular upon proceedings in the High Court in which SA was involved over ten years ago which attracted a great deal of publicity at the time (“the historic legal proceedings”). The judge in that case had made remarks in the judgment that were critical of all the parties to that litigation, including SA, and expressed doubts about the truthfulness of some of her evidence.[22]The widespread contemporaneous press coverage of the historic legal proceedings included a newspaper interview with SA. SA has therefore voluntarily undergone a degree of public exposure. Ms Palin relied on suggestions made in some of those reports that in the light of the judge’s findings, SA’s immigration status might now be subject to review, and that she could be liable to removal. She submitted that public confidence in the legal system would be undermined if the public did not know the end of the story. It is in the public interest that they should know that the tribunals and this court have concluded that the Home Office was right to revoke (or to describe it more accurately, cancel) SA’s immigration status.[23]Ms Palin also relied on an apparent resurgence of interest in the historic legal proceedings in 2022 when the other parties to it became involved in proceedings in the Administrative Court, albeit that SA was not a party to those proceedings. She made the point that in the light of all the prior coverage of the historic legal proceedings (and to a lesser extent the public law proceedings in 2022) a substantial sector of the public could read the publicly available judgment of this court in the revocation proceedings and realise who SA is. That meant that the anonymity order was substantially ineffective. Moreover, if the press were to report that judgment without naming SA, there was a real risk of “jigsaw” identification. It was difficult, if not impossible, for them to report information that is already in the public domain without breaching the orders made by the lower tribunals and by me.[24]Those are powerful points. However, the vast majority of the press coverage was over ten years ago. The FtT in the revocation appeal proceedings was aware of the information that was already in the public domain in consequence of all the earlier litigation and took it into account when it made its order. So too did Judge Clements in 2022 when he refused the application to lift the anonymity order made by the FtT in 2008 in the asylum appeal. Significantly, apart from the reporting of the Administrative Court proceedings in 2022, which largely repeated what had been published at the time of the historic legal proceedings, most of the press interest and coverage occurred at a time before SA became a protected party.[25]The key issue which arises is whether lifting the anonymity order would be a disproportionate interference with SA’s rights under Article 8 ECHR. The threshold is a high one; the question for the court is whether the consequences of disclosure would be so serious an interference with SA’s right to respect for her private life that it is necessary and proportionate to interfere with the ordinary rule of open justice. Does the evidence demonstrate a real risk that her physical or psychological integrity would be undermined by the publicity that would follow if the order were lifted?

The medical evidence before the Tribunals

[26]The information about SA’s mental health at the time of the FtT decision in the revocation proceedings is recorded in that decision, which was promulgated on 1 September 2023. The FtT panel made reference to the order of the Court of Protection, which was made only in respect of SA’s capacity to look after her own financial affairs and to conduct litigation. That order has now been in place for just over seven years. The tribunal observed that “capacity is of course multi-faceted, and the medical evidence raises concerns as to whether the loss of capacity also extends to other areas of decision making. Nothing in this decision should be read as a suggestion that we have sought to look behind this.” At the hearing of ANL’s application the court inquired whether the order had ever been expanded to cover any other areas; following the hearing SA’s legal representatives made some inquiries and informed us that it has not.[27]The FtT decision indicates that on the evidence before it, SA’s mental health deteriorated after the historic legal proceedings came to an end, and that she had suffered a particularly significant and serious deterioration in around April 2017. At some point between then and December 2017 SA was diagnosed with a schizo-affective disorder, a lifelong condition for which there is no cure, although it can be managed with appropriate treatment. She was admitted to hospital voluntarily for treatment in May 2017, but then formally detained under the Mental Health Act from 22 November 2017 until 1 August 2019. That is a very long period for someone to be detained, and the length of compulsory detention is indicative of how unwell SA must have been at the time. Her Deputy was appointed during that period of detention, on 8 June 2018.[28]The FtT referred to a report from a registered chartered Consultant Clinical Psychologist dated 22 March 2021 which was prepared in order to address the question of SA’s ongoing capacity to litigate, and also to two reports from a Consultant Neurologist dated 4 May 2022 and 10 February 2023. The Consultant Psychologist assessed SA throughout the period from December 2019 to March 2021. He had the benefit of reports from her case manager, social worker and Deputy, as well as attendance notes of meetings with the Deputy. The FtT was satisfied that his opinions were “extremely well sourced” and placed “considerable weight” on his conclusions.[29]The Consultant Neurologist was of the view that SA’s condition in 2022 was “significantly worse” than when she had last been assessed by the Consultant Psychologist. He considered that by then she lacked capacity in every aspect of her living process, and that what he described as her “florid symptoms” were no longer under control, although he speculated that this was possibly because she had ceased taking her medication. At that point she was delusional and hearing voices in her head encouraging her to kill people and to harm herself and her daughter, and other voices telling her that if she did so she would go to Hell.[30]In his skeleton argument Mr Gajjar quoted from the Consultant Neurologist’s report of 4 May 2022. Salient extracts include the following:
“The last three days however before seeing her she said she was very ill and that she could not sleep, and she was worried about her general medical condition as a result of ongoing matters in the immigration proceedings and in particular the application by the Daily Mail which was making her anxious and paranoid to the point where she cannot leave the house…. …. She told me that the immigration status was still a problem for her, and most recently the application being made by the Daily Mail is of grave concern, causing her mental health to deteriorate again. I can see that the application and potential involvement by the Daily Mail in the ongoing immigration litigation has had a significant effect on [SA’s] mental state and there is a significant vulnerability that it could cause a severe deterioration in her mental health. Ultimately without knowing the basis of any national newspaper intervention and the precise documents, all I am able to do is reflect on the commentary of [SA] and those who have been working with her as best they can.”
[31]It is unclear what application SA was referring to. There is no evidence before us that the Daily Mail or any other newspaper was involved in the application made by a private individual in 2022 to lift the 2008 anonymity order, to which I referred in paragraph 4 above, which of course predated the revocation appeal proceedings. However, the journalist from the Daily Mail who provided a witness statement in support of ANL’s application has attended hearings in both sets of immigration proceedings to date, and one possibility is that SA associated him with the application that was eventually refused by Judge Clements. The SSHD has also drawn our attention to the mention in an appendix to the FtT’s decision of 1 September 2023 of an application made by the Daily Mail later in 2022 to review documents submitted as evidence in the revocation appeal proceedings. It is possible that SA became aware of that application in advance. A further possibility is that SA was under the delusional belief that the Daily Mail had applied to lift the anonymity orders that had been in place in the asylum appeal proceedings since 2008.[32]The Consultant Neurologist’s supplemental report in February 2023 (around a month before the FtT heard the appeal against the revocation order) suggested there had been “material improvement” as a result of the resumption of medication. He did not elaborate on how the improvement manifested itself, but since there was no further mention of the delusions which he had singled out for mention in his first report, it is reasonable to infer that this aspect of the illness was now being kept under control by medication. The Neurologist was of the opinion that SA’s chronic health difficulties were not the result of any neurological condition but purely psychiatric.

The application to adjourn

[33]The hearing of ANL’s application was listed for 17 July 2025 with a time estimate of half a day, following directions given by the court on 8 April 2025. At that stage both parties appear to have proceeded on the assumption that SA’s Deputy and her legal representatives would be relying on the medical reports that were before the FtT and UT, albeit that they were now somewhat out of date.[34]On 26 June 2025 SA’s legal representatives notified ANL that they proposed to make an application for an adjournment of the hearing. That application was not issued until 3 July, and it did not come to our attention until 9 July. The application sought an adjournment of 4 months in which to obtain updated medical evidence from the same Consultant Psychologist who had examined SA over a lengthy period following her release from detention under the Mental Health Act, and produced the report in 2021 on which the FtT had relied. It was said that SA’s Deputy and her legal team had identified the need for a further expert medical report on 17 June 2025. It was not until after ANL had put in its submissions opposing the adjournment, that SA’s solicitors provided any explanation for the delay in making its application. The explanation was not very satisfactory, though I accept that SA can be challenging for her legal representatives and her Deputy to deal with.[35]ANL strongly opposed the application for an adjournment. They pointed out that SA’s representatives had already had ample time in which to obtain and serve updated evidence if they wished to do so. ANL had informed SA’s solicitors that they did not consider this belated request provided adequate justification for an adjournment of a listed hearing in the Court of Appeal, and that if SA’s Deputy wanted to provide a further medical report he should do so as a matter of urgency and without further delay. This remained ANL’s position. They described the requested length of the adjournment as “wholly excessive” and pointed to the fact that three months had already elapsed since the judgment had been handed down. The application raised important open justice issues and it was wasteful of the court’s resources and contrary to the parties’ obligations under the Overriding Objective to wait until the eleventh hour before raising the need for further evidence requiring an adjournment.[36]SA’s solicitors confirmed in their response to ANL’s objections that they were seeking an updated report on SA’s capacity, which in the court’s view was unlikely to advance matters to any significant extent.[37]The court refused the application to adjourn. We considered that despite the practical difficulties in gaining co-operation from SA which were described by her solicitors, they could and should have turned their minds much sooner to the question whether updated medical evidence was required. In any event, SA is still subject to an order from the Court of Protection and therefore her lack of capacity to litigate and to manage her own financial affairs is not in dispute. Given that ANL were content to proceed without an updated report (and thus to forego any opportunity to rely upon any improvement in her mental health) and there was no evidence before the Court of any material change either way in SA’s condition since the reports that were considered by the FtT, there was no justification for granting an adjournment.

The June 2025 letter

[38]The Court did, however, consider a letter written by the Consultant Psychologist on 26 June 2025 which was produced in support of the adjournment application, and which contained further information of some relevance to ANL’s application. There is no dispute about this expert’s credentials or his independence, and the fact that this evidence is not in a formal report and was produced in the manner in which it was, is a matter that goes to its weight rather than its admissibility. In the letter he explained that his prior assessment of SA over a prolonged period between December 2019 and March 2021 involved “extensive” clinical interviews, functional capacity assessments, collateral reports from involved professionals, and psychometric testing. He then said that during the course of his assessment:
“it became evident that exposure to public scrutiny and reputational risk has historically been a significant trigger for deterioration in [SA’s] mental health. This was particularly evident during and following the [historic legal proceedings] brought against her, during which she was subjected to intense and negative press coverage. Following that period, she experienced a significant psychiatric decline, which included delusional beliefs, paranoia, hospital admissions under the Mental Health Act and episodes of psychotic behaviour.”
[39]After describing those episodes of psychosis in more detail, which it is unnecessary to repeat save to note that they included suicidal ideation, the Consultant Psychologist then said this:
“The historical link between adverse publicity and her mental health deterioration is well documented across the reports reviewed, and corroborated by multiple professionals involved in her care. Notably the events that followed the … publicity [at the time of the historic legal proceedings] included psychiatric hospitalisations, safeguarding concerns and substantial impairment in her functioning and insight”
. He expressed the clinical opinion that any re-exposure to press scrutiny, particularly scrutiny of the nature likely to arise were the anonymity order to be lifted, would represent a serious risk to SA’s psychological stability and could precipitate a significant relapse which could include recurrence of psychosis, exacerbation of paranoid ideation, increased suicidality and deterioration in her ability to function independently. In the light of the chronic nature of her psychiatric condition, the presence of residual functional and cognitive vulnerabilities and the history of trauma linked to reputational exposure, he “strongly advised” that the anonymity order remain in place, at least until a full clinical report could be completed and reviewed.[40]Ms Palin submitted that adverse publicity and press criticism will often cause embarrassment, anxiety and distress. They may even have an adverse impact on the mental health of those involved in litigation which is the subject of reporting, and the fact that such publicity could trigger a depressive episode, even a serious one, would not normally suffice to justify interference with the principle of open justice. There was a strong public interest in the exposure of immigration fraud, and it was harmful to withhold from the public information about the way in which the Secretary of State and the tribunals and court had resolved some of the issues of general public interest raised by the judgment in the historic legal proceedings. The decisions of the two tribunals now showed that some of the conclusions reached by the judge in those proceedings, based on the more limited evidence adduced in that case, were erroneous. This case was not one of moving SA from the shadows into the floodlight of publicity but rather a matter of widening the lens of publicity, so that it included how the issues concerning her case which were already in the public domain, including questions about the veracity of her claim to asylum, had been resolved.[41]Ms Palin accepted that it was relevant that SA had been found by the Court of Protection to lack capacity, but submitted that she has medical advisers who can assist her in preparing to deal with the impact on her of adverse publicity if she is identified. She described the medical evidence relied on by SA’s legal representatives as “generic” and submitted that it was neither clear nor cogent and that it did not enable the court to measure the harm that SA was likely to suffer in consequence of publicity against the Art 10 rights of the public and the press.[42]Mr Gajjar took issue with that description, pointing out that the FtT had accepted the medical evidence and the SSHD had not sought to challenge it. He stressed that SA’s condition is both chronic and incurable, although manageable with medication, and thus ongoing. Thus it was open to the court to place reliance on what was said by the medical professionals in 2021, 2022 and 2023. On that evidence, the episodes of significant deterioration in SA’s mental health have been triggered by adverse publicity or by fear of it. He accepted that if there were to be a significant improvement in her mental health in future, the issue could always be revisited, but on the evidence before the court at present he contended that there were well documented concerns articulated by a responsible medical professional (supported by similar concerns voiced in the past) that lifting the anonymity order could cause a very significant deterioration in her condition. That was enough to outweigh the public interest in the public being told that the Home Office and the tribunals and courts had addressed the false claim for asylum and revoked SA’s refugee status.[43]As to the fact that some of the information about SA is already in the public domain, Mr Gajjar described the bulk of the material, including the newspaper interview with SA, as “dated”. He pointed out that there was no evidence that the matters with which those reports were concerned had remained firmly in the public eye. He submitted that the 2022 articles about the public law case involving those with whom SA had previously been in dispute did not advance ANL’s case because they mainly focused upon matters which arose after the historic legal proceedings and which had nothing to do with her.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

[44]I accept Mr Gajjar’s characterisation of his client as an individual falling outside the ordinary class of persons to whom litigation and any ensuing publicity about it would be likely to bring about a degree of mental discomfort which would be an acceptable price to pay for open justice. She is seriously mentally unwell. Her condition is chronic and incurable. She has lacked the capacity to look after her own financial affairs and to litigate for some years, and although the resumption of medication appears to have helped to overcome some of the more disturbing features of her illness in early 2023, the Consultant Psychologist who had the advantage of treating her from December 2019 to March 2021 has expressed a professional view that lifting the anonymity order would present a serious risk to her psychological stability. That is not generic evidence, it is focused, it makes sense, and in my view it is compelling.[45]Each case turns upon its own facts and in this case I am persuaded by Mr Gajjar that the evidence of the serious harm that SA would be likely to suffer if the order were to be lifted at this juncture outweighs the very strong public interest in allowing ANL to identify her. Whilst it is possible for someone reading the most recent judgment to work out who SA is by putting certain pieces of information together, I am not persuaded that this renders the order worthless or unworkable or that it places the press at an unfair disadvantage. I would therefore refuse ANL’s application to lift the anonymity order made in this court, and therefore the orders made by the UT and FtT must also remain in force.[46]As for the application for the release of documents, as Mr Gajjar has accepted, ANL is entitled to see the skeleton arguments filed by the parties in this Court and in the FtT, subject to redactions reflecting the substance of the order. For some reason, ANL has not sought a copy of the Secretary of State’s skeleton argument or grounds of appeal against the FtT decision, but in principle they would also be documents to which ANL is entitled subject to appropriate redaction. The application for an unredacted version of the FtT judgment is refused, consistently with the decision that the anonymity order should remain in force for the time being.[47]I am not persuaded that ANL, as a non-party, is entitled to disclosure of any evidence filed by SA in support of her appeal to the FtT against the revocation order. It is unnecessary for journalists to have access to that evidence in order to have a full and fair understanding of the issues involved in the appeal or of the case being advanced by the parties to that appeal. The decision of the FtT is lengthy and detailed, and sufficiently describes the evidence that it has taken into account in making its various findings. The principle of open justice is satisfied by ANL having redacted copies of the FtT’s decision and of the skeleton arguments that they have requested. For those reasons, I would refuse this aspect of ANL’s application also. Lord Justice Arnold:[48]I agree.

Lord Justice Baker:

[49]I also agree.