DEREK ACHONG
A Chinese national has failed in his final appeal on the dismissal of his lawsuit over the failure of the Minister of National Security to provide detailed reasons for ordering his deportation.
In a judgment, earlier this week, five Law Lords of the United Kingdom-based Privy Council dismissed the appeal brought by Yonggao Pan.
According to the evidence, Pan first came to this country in 2006 to work as a civil engineer with a company.
In September 2019, Pan applied for permanent residency.
However, four months later he was charged with fraud.
While on remand, National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds rejected his permanent residency application on the basis of the charge and his incarceration on remand.
When he was eventually released on bail in June 2020, Pan was issued a deportation order, which was signed by Hinds, months earlier.
Pan requested detailed reasons for the deportation order. Hinds refused as he claimed that a sufficient explanation was provided in the deportation order in which he referred to Pan's incarceration and his breach of the terms and conditions of his lawful entry into the country.
Pan filed a judicial review lawsuit challenging Hinds' failure to provide detailed reasons.
A High Court Judge refused Pan leave to pursue the case as she agreed with Hinds.
Pan's initial challenge was rejected by the Court of Appeal leading to his final appeal before this country's highest appellate court.
In determining the case, Lady Ingrid Simler and her colleagues had to consider the effect of section 16 of the Judicial Review Act.
The legislation, which gives citizens the ability to challenge decisions against them taken by public authorities and officials, allows aggrieved parties to request reasons from decision-makers.
Judges are empowered to compel disclosure if they grant applicants leave to pursue their cases.
Lady Simler agreed with the Appeal Court that the legislation did not give a right to reasons or a mandatory duty on decision-makers to provide reasons.
"For section 16 to be interpreted in a way that reverses that position would have the potential to cause chaos in routine administrative decision-making, with requests for reasons made of administrative decisions that do not generally give rise to any duty to give reasons," she said.
However, she disagreed with the Court of Appeal's finding that litigants could not rely on the failure to provide reasons as the sole ground for pursuing a judicial review case.
"There is no justification for requiring a substantive ground that is independent of the allegation of failure to provide reasons to be advanced," she said.
"On this basis, a court considering an application for leave to apply for judicial review based only on the asserted failure to provide reasons will have to decide whether there is an arguable case for saying that reasons should have been, but have not been, provided and that the applicant has sufficient standing to apply," she added.
Lady Simler went on to consider whether the reasoning provided by Hinds in the deportation order for Pan was sufficient to allow Pan to challenge his proposed deportation.
"The Board is satisfied that the deportation order itself adequately sets out the reasons for the Minister's decision," she said.
"They are intelligible and sufficient to enable a judicial review challenge to be made," she said.
Pan was represented by Navindra Ramnanan and Riaz Seecharan, while Rowan Pennington-Benton represented Hinds.