Public Law Solicitors

The court issued a claim filed by Duncan Lewis on behalf of two clients who are challenging the decisions of the Home Office to class them as Group 2 Refugees and grant them temporary refugee permission to stay in the UK, on March 14.

Their Group 2 grant of leave is for 30 months. This will require them to be in the UK for 10 years before applying for settled status, has reduced entitlement to family reunion and may prevent them from accessing public funds in the future. Group 1 refugees on the other hand are granted 5 years’ leave, can apply for settled status at the expiry of that leave, have greater rights to family reunion and have access to public funds as a condition of their leave.

The Home Office decisions were made pursuant to the new rules set out in Section 12 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which allows the Secretary of State to differentiate between the conditions of leave granted to a refugee based on whether they consider a person to have come directly to the UK.

The Claimants are challenging the decisions and the underlying policies on the basis that they are inconsistent with the Refugee Convention, which imposes a duty on the UK to expedite naturalisation proceedings, and not to impose penalties on refugees who have come directly to the UK, and on the basis that they have been discriminated against unlawfully.

Jeremy Bloom, Solicitor for the claimants said: “There were no safe and legal routes available to our clients to come to the UK and seek protection. The Home Office has recognised that they are deserving of the UK’s protection because of the risks of persecution that face in their country of origin, yet are treating them as second class refugees because they say they did not come directly to the UK.

This Home Secretary and her predecessors have shown, again and again, that they have no interest in setting lawful policies or implementing those policies in a lawful and humane way. We are proud to be fighting on behalf of our clients to get these discriminatory decisions quashed, and to ensure that they have access to all the benefits that a grant of Group 1 refugee status entails.”

If you or someone you know claimed asylum after June 28, 2022, and have received either a notice of intent that the Home Office is planning to treat you as a Group 2 refugee, or a decision granting you temporary refugee permission to stay, then please get in touch!

The Duncan Lewis immigration and public law department is expert in all aspects of human rights, asylum and deportation. The team has achieved significant success on behalf of its clients. It holds a distinguished position in leading bold public interest litigation and in challenging litigation and political conditions that frequently invoke common law, constitutional and human rights arguments.

The team has a broad practice representing clients in matters involving immigration; asylum and human rights and deportation matters, with a niche practice in immigration and civil liberties claimant judicial review matters.

Call us now on 033 3772 0409 or email us at contact@duncanlewis.com.

The team working on this at Duncan Lewis is Toufique Hossain, Nazia Khan, Jeremy Bloom, Raman Kumar and Nina Kamp.

Counsel instructed are Alex Goodman KC at Landmark Chambers and Sarah Dobbie, at Doughty Street Chambers.