“I have always found Mr Sandy to be honest, hardworking and a diligent worker. He cares greatly about the staff and patients in this organisation and I have frequently seen him going the extra mile to provide care and attention to both. He takes his work very seriously and his attendance and reliability are excellent. He has always demonstrated thoughtful kindness and compassion towards patients and families in his care.”
“clear that if after a full consideration of a person’s ability to meet the good character requirement taking into account both adverse and positive factors, if serious doubts remain, a certification of naturalisation should not be issued.”
“Your client is considered to have been a long-term member of the Sierra Leone Army and later the AFRC. His actions will have contributed to the overall purposes of the organisations. In determining this, I have considered factors such as his role in the AFRC, his profile within the group and the length of his membership and association with Koroma. […] On the basis of this and the information he has provided during the course of the interaction with the Home Office, it is concluded that your client aided the commission of war crimes. Further, he is considered responsible for aiding the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against personnel involved in a peacekeeping mission as per Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Guinea was increasingly embroiled in the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Guinea’s refugee camps and border villages were attacked, and the population submitted to murders, rapes, looting and destruction of property by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Such attacks were war crimes, and it is therefore believed your client indirectly aided these war crimes by his involvement in training troops who committed international war crimes. […] In establishing whether there are grounds to refuse an application, we consider evidence directly linking the applicant to such activities, such as the likelihood of their membership of and activities for groups responsible for committing such crimes. The individual role of the applicant, length of their membership and level of seniority are also relevant. […] I have looked at the positive aspects of your life since arriving in the UK as well as the information he himself provided during his asylum process about his life and circumstances in Sierra Leone. There are no doubts your client’s actions in Sierra Leone benefited the AFRC directly or indirectly. It is an organisation known to have committed abuses and international crimes whilst he was with them. His profile was significant, as the Aide De Camp to the then President. I have been unable to establish compelling evidence to show strong countervailing factors in your client’s personal circumstances and conduct since entering the United Kingdom that could outweigh the assistance and support, he gave to the AFRC and J P Koroma. It is noted that Koroma, was indicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone on March 7 2002, he was wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity and other serious violations of international humanitarian law prior to his death. I have reviewed the consideration given to your client’s application and the decision made on it. I am satisfied that there are no grounds to overturn the previous decision to refuse on the basis your client was unable to meet the statutory requirement to be of good character. The decision to refuse the application is therefore maintained.”
“The decision maker erred in law in that the decision maker did not consider the following in the exercise of her discretion and referred to in the published policy: (a) Mitigation, duress, and other defences, including the superior orders defence. (b) The degree to which the applicant had distanced himself from his past memberships or associations in Sierra Leone. (c) The degree to which the Claimant was personally and directly involved in the relevant activities in Sierra Leone.”
“The decision maker erred in law in that in the exercise of her discretion she did not consider the following matters referred to in the published policy: (a) the defences available to the claimant, including duress and superior orders, and the mitigation available to him referable to the facts giving rise to those defences; (b) the degree to which the claimant had distanced himself from his past memberships or associations in Sierra Leone; and (c) the degree to which the claimant was personally and directly involved in the relevant activities in Sierra Leone.”
“Acquisition by naturalisation. (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.”
“…the requirements for naturalisation as a British citizen under section 6(1) are, in the case of any person who applies for it: … (b) that he is of good character; …”
“Was he dishonest?”, “Did he act with a sexual motivation?”, and “Did he make a special contribution?”
“Is he of good character?”
“…the Secretary of State must be satisfied that the applicant is a person of good character. This is not strictly speaking an exercise in discretion. Rather it is an exercise in assessment or evaluation.”
“It is, of course, not enough for the wife to establish that this court might, or would, have made a different order. We are here concerned with a judicial discretion, and it is of the essence of such a discretion that on the same evidence two different minds might reach widely different decisions without either being appealable. It is only where the decision exceeds the generous ambit within which reasonable disagreement is possible, and is, in fact, plainly wrong, that an appellate body is entitled to interfere. …the appellate court must bear in mind the advantage which the first instance judge had in seeing the parties and the other witnesses. This is well understood on questions of credibility and findings of primary fact. But it goes further than that. It applies also to the judge's evaluation of those facts.”
“Certificate of naturalization (1) The Secretary of State may grant a certificate of naturalization At some point between 1914 and 1948 the Parliamentary draftsman abandoned the Oxford spelling of the verb suffix -ize in favour of -ise.
“It is true the discretion must be exercised reasonably. Now what does that mean? Lawyers familiar with the phraseology commonly used in relation to exercise of statutory discretions often use the word “unreasonable” in a rather comprehensive sense. It has frequently been used and is frequently used as a general description of the things that must not be done. For instance, a person entrusted with a discretion must, so to speak, direct himself properly in law. He must call his own attention to the matters which he is bound to consider. He must exclude from his consideration matters which are irrelevant to what he has to consider. If he does not obey those rules, he may truly be said, and often is said, to be acting “unreasonably.”
“You must refuse an application if the person’s activities cast ‘serious doubts’ on their character.”
“Was the Home Secretary's decision [to reject Mr Al-Fayed’s application for naturalisation] disproportionate or irrational?”
“40. It is important to emphasise that the decision to be taken, though, like many such decisions, one which could seriously affect the rights of the applicant, was an administrative decision, reviewable by the courts only if the decision-maker in some way misdirected himself or, having correctly directed himself, gave a decision which no reasonable decision-maker could have given in the circumstances. It being clear that the Home Secretary correctly directed himself, the present case falls into the second category. In simple language, what is said is that the decision was so out of proportion, or, in simpler language still, so much of an over-reaction, to the unimportance of the facts relied on that no sensible person could have made it. The case having been put in that way, the substance of it, as Mr Beloff has accepted, can be seen to be conventional irrationality. It is therefore unnecessary to enter into the question whether our law recognises disproportionality as a separate ground on which administrative decisions can be reviewed by the court.” 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.”
“The parties are in agreement that the Secretary of State enjoys a significant measure of appreciation in assessing for herself the requisite standard of good character in the factual context of the application under consideration. In R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex parte Al Fayed[2000] EWCA Civ 523 , at paragraph 41 Nourse LJ (with whom in this respect Kennedy and Rix LJJ agreed) observed that the concept of good character was incapable of being defined against a single standard to which all could subscribe. A decision by the Secretary of State could be based upon a higher standard of good character than that which might be adopted by another decision-maker also acting reasonably. Parliament had assigned to a minister of the Crown the task of making the judgement whether a person was of good character and it was for the minister to adopt the requisite standard of good character subject only to a requirement of reasonableness.”
“The test for irrationality is set high, namely, that no rational decision-maker could have reached this conclusion. This test is especially difficult to satisfy in an area where Parliament has conferred a broad discretion on the Secretary of State and the Court of Appeal has declared that ‘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’ (per Nourse LJ in ex p. AL Fayed (No. 2)).”
“131 The appellants raise the argument that the time has come to reconsider the basis on which the courts review decisions of the executive, and in particular that the traditional Wednesbury rationality basis for challenging executive decisions should be replaced by a more structured and principled challenge based on proportionality. The possibility of such a change was judicially canvassed for the first time in this jurisdiction by Lord Diplock in Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service[1985] AC 374 , 410E, and it has been mentioned by various judges in a number of subsequent cases – often with some enthusiasm, for instance by Lord Slynn in R (Alconbury Developments Ltd) v Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions[2001] UKHL 23 ,[2003] 2 AC 295 , para 51. In other words, the appellants contend that the four-stage test identified by Lord Sumption and Lord Reed in Bank Mellat v HM Treasury (No 2)[2013] UKSC 39 ,[2014] AC 700 , paras 20 and 74 should now be applied in place of rationality in all domestic judicial review cases.” … 133. The move from rationality to proportionality, as urged by the appellants, would appear to have potentially profound and far-reaching consequences, because it would involve the court considering the merits of the decision at issue: in particular, it would require the courts to consider the balance which the decision-maker has struck between competing interests (often a public interest against a private interest) and the weight to be accorded to each such interest – see R (Daly) v Secretary of State for the Home Department[2001] UKHL 26 ,[2001] 2 AC 532 , para 27, per Lord Steyn. However, it is important to emphasise that it is no part of the appellants’ case that the court would thereby displace the relevant member of the executive as the primary decision-maker – as to which see per Lord Sumption and Lord Reed in Bank Mellat (No 2) at paras 21 and 71 respectively. Furthermore, as the passages cited by Lord Kerr from Kennedy v Charity Commission (Secretary of State for Justice intervening)[2014] UKSC 20 ,[2015] AC 455 , paras 51 and 54, and Pham v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Open Society Justice Initiative intervening)[2015] UKSC 19 ,[2015] 1 WLR 1591 , paras 96, 113 and 115 show, the domestic law may already be moving away to some extent from the irrationality test in some cases.”
“For completeness, the Commission agrees with the Secretary of State that proportionality does not form a separate head of public law challenge in a non-human rights context. Our reading of the decision of the Supreme Court in Keyu v SSFCDA[2015] UKSC 69 ;[2016] AC 1355 , paras 131ff, is that the law has not moved that far. That was the point the Commission was seeking to make in B4 at para 81 (“no overarching proportionality assessment”), in response to a wide-ranging submission made by the appellant.”
“In any democracy subject to the rule of law, all public power is limited by law.”
“The decision maker erred in law in that in the exercise of her discretion she did not consider the following matters referred to in the published policy: (a) the defences available to the claimant, including duress and superior orders, and the mitigation available to him referable to the facts giving rise to those defences.”
“The decision maker erred in law in that in the exercise of her discretion she did not consider the following matters referred to in the published policy: (c) the degree to which the claimant was personally and directly involved in the relevant activities in Sierra Leone. This ground seems to be based on a false premise. It implies that the Guidance requires an applicant to have been personally and directly implicated in war crimes and other atrocities before a finding of bad character can be made. The Guidance does not say that. On its tenth page it states: “Those who associate or have associated with persons involved in terrorism, extremism and/ or war crimes may also be liable to refusal of citizenship.”
“How long has this association lasted? The longer the association, the more likely it may be that the applicant is aware of or accepts the activities and views. How long ago did such association take place?”
“The decision maker erred in law in that in the exercise of her discretion she did not consider the following matters referred to in the published policy: (b) the degree to which the claimant had distanced himself from his past memberships or associations in Sierra Leone.”
“I have taken note of his circumstances and his life in the United Kingdom over the past 20+ years. I note that he has raised a family and maintained a family life in the UK. He has a good employment record; he is a nurse and has a position of responsibility in the NHS. I acknowledge he has had no convictions and that there are no apparent adverse factors for me to consider, since his entry to the United Kingdom.”