“Key factors when assessing a grant of leave for additional family members include the proximity of the family relationship, the family circumstances of the individuals involved (including the nature and extent of any dependency), the way in which the employment or the relevant Afghan citizen has led to any risk to the family member and what those risks are. … Compelling reasons must be provided along with any supporting documentation to confirm both the relationship between them and the link to risk faced by the family members as a result of the work of the relevant Afghan citizen eligible for relocation under the ARAP. [Leave outside the rules] should only be considered where either there are genuine, verifiable compelling reasons relating to the family member’s safety and security, or vulnerabilities. It is not intended to provide for all additional family members.”
“on the basis of my role and experience, the Decision and the approach taken remains within what would be expected in the circumstances. …on my own review of the materials [provided by QA] I consider that the reports are not such as to determine the outcome or justify deferring to the opinions expressed. For example, the conclusions drawn by [a witness] are not definitive; he had not visited Afghanistan since 2012… With respect to [an expert report], he has only visited Afghanistan twice, the most recent visit being in 2010… insofar any issue arises as to whether a reconsideration of the application would be likely to lead to a different outcome, for my part (given my role and experience in relation to such decisions), I would not expect a different outcome…”
“The purpose of her witness statement was… not to set out her personal view of the Claimant’s application, or indeed to carry out any further informal review of the evidence provided, but rather to set out the chronology and what was considered at each stage, as set out in the panel minutes. As such my client considers that it was unnecessary to specify within her witness statement that she was a member of one of the panels which met.”
“[t]he open versions of these documents ought not to have pretended to be something they were not.”
“There is obviously an overlap between [the requirement for an open mind] and the commonplace requirement to have rational regard to relevant considerations. But, in my judgment, the requirement to avoid predetermination goes further. The further vice of predetermination is that the very process of democratic decision making, weighing and balancing relevant factors and taking account of any other viewpoints, which may justify a different balance, is evaded. Even if all the considerations have passed through the predetermined mind, the weighing and balancing of them will not have been undertaken in the manner required. Additionally, where a view has been predetermined, the reasons given may support that view without actually being the true reasons. The decision-making process will not then have proceeded from reasoning to decision, but in the reverse order. In those circumstances, the reasons given would not be true reasons but a sham.”
“32. …If a judge has presided at a first instance trial and roundly concluded on the facts – after hearing disputed, perhaps hotly disputed, evidence – that one of the parties lacks all merit, everyone would accept that it would be unthinkable that he should sit on that party’s appeal. He has committed himself to a view of the facts which he himself had the responsibility to decide… 33. In some such cases the judge’s inability to open his mind on the appeal would be not just apparent, but real: if after a careful and professional review of all the evidence, given by witnesses whom, so to speak, he has looked in the face, he has arrived at the conviction that the party in question is a crook or a rogue, guilty as charged (whether the case is criminal or civil), he might not conscientiously be able to put himself back into a state of mind where he has no preconceptions about the merits of the case. 34. There may also be cases, though one hopes there will not be, in which a judge called on to make a preliminary decision expresses himself in such vituperative language that any reasonable person will regard him as disqualified from taking a fair view of the case if he is called on to revisit it.”
“It is impossible to know how influential the views of the individual panel members have been. If one member is tainted by apparent bias, the Committee’s decision will be vitiated.”