Schotland: No Home Office duty of care to migrants hit by delays confirming leave to remain (vertaald naar de Nederlandse situatie niet op tijd een pasje verstrekt)
The case of Advocate General for Scotland v Adiukwu [2020] CSIH 47 answers the question of whether the Home Office has a private law duty to grant a person discretionary leave to remain and issue them with a letter to allow them to take up employment once a tribunal has granted their appeal on human rights grounds. It doesn’t. Attempt to sue for loss of earnings Ms Adiukwu, a Nigerian law student, won her human rights appeal in the Upper Tribunal in March 2015. The Home Office did not issue her with a status letter until November 2016. She took a civil action against the department, suing for £56,000 in lost earnings and benefit entitlements because officials had taken so long to implement the tribunal’s decision. The Home Office lost in the Sheriff Court, which found that the department did owe a duty to successful appellants to speedily grant them leave to remain. The problem, which only really became apparent once the case reached the Court of Session, was that th...