An immigration appeal tribunal was wrong to find that a family in Gaza were entitled under the human rights convention to join a relative in Britain, the court of Appeal decided yesterday.
The case became notorious in February when the opposition leader Kemi Badenoch drew attention at prime minister’s questions to the fact that the un-named family had applied for entry using a form designed for the Ukrainian resettlement scheme.
Allowing an appeal by the home secretary Shabana Mahmood, three senior judges headed by the master of the rolls Sir Geoffrey Vos held that there was no family life uniting the family of six, who were living in Gaza, with the father’s brother, who came to the UK in 2007 and now has British citizenship.
Yesterday’s ruling will not affect the four children and their parents, who were granted entry clearance by the former home secretary Yvette Cooper. But in future the courts will have to interpret “family life” more narrowly.
Vos and his fellow appeal judges said the human rights court had consistently held that the law does not protect family life between parents and adult children,or adult siblings,unless they can demonstrate “additional elements of dependence,involving more than the normal emotional ties”.
I reported in july that the case had exposed a difference of opinion between Cooper and the then foreign secretary David Lammy. But there was no truth in the widely believed suggestion that the family were trying to pass themselves off as ukrainians. As the court said yesterday, “they used the Ukraine family scheme form as the home secretary’s guidance – entitled Leave outside the Rules – tells applicants to use the submission form “for the route which most closely matches [your] circumstances”.
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