In a ruling today the High Court held that a child detained under the sentence of a court did not have an automatic entitlement to a solicitor to help him understand and respond to service of formal notice of liability to deportation.
The court rejected the claim of a Portuguese child that such right could be derived from the Charter, section 55 or the common law in the exercise of former Treaty rights under the Citizens Directive or the Immigration (EEA) Regulations 2016. Although the possibility of procedural unfairness was not ruled out in the claimant’s case, the court held that the First-tier Tribunal should decide if the actions taken against him as a child and which culminated in the decision to deport him, taken on his eighteenth birthday, caused his removal to be unlawful.
No5 Barrister’s Chambers Becket Bedford and Mark Bradshaw acted for the claimant instructed by Instalaw solicitors.
