THE Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has ruled that the Home Office has breached the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and could be held in contempt of court, for failing to provide The National with figures relating to the number of appeals and judicial reviews lodged against UK visa decisions.
In a decision announced yesterday, the ICO said the Home Office had breached Section 10 (1) of the FOIA, which states that “a public authority must comply with section 1(1) promptly and in any event not later than the twentieth working day following the date of receipt”.
The ICO says the Home Office now has 35 days to respond to our request, and states: “Failure to comply may result in the Commissioner making written certification of this fact to the High Court pursuant to section 54 of the Act and may be dealt with as contempt of court.”
We first made the FOI request last November 3, seeking details of the number of appeals against visa decisions and the percentages that were upheld and rejected.
A similar question was asked about the numbers of judicial reviews of visa decisions and a breakdown of results, as well as the number of cases from which the Home Office withdrew before they were heard.
Under FOI legislation the Home Office should have replied within 20 working days.
Instead, two weeks later we received an email from the Home Office seeking “clarification”, to which we responded immediately.
By December 21 we had heard nothing, so we emailed the Home Office as a final step before escalating the matter and received a reply with a new case reference number and a pledge to respond to our request by the end of January.
Not satisfied with this, we then sought an internal review of the matter, and were told that the Home Office should have told us if they needed extra time to deal with our request.
There was also an apology and confirmation that our request was “under active consideration”, although no date for a reply was given.
Phone calls to the Home Office proved to be a waste of time, so in February we raised the matter with the ICO. Now, four months later — and almost eight months after the original FOI request — we appear to be getting somewhere.
The National decided to pursue this following the extensive coverage we have given to some of the highest-profile immigration injustices in Scotland.
These have included Australians Kathryn and Gregg Brain and their Gaelic-speaking son Lachlan, and Canadians Jason and Christy Zielsdorf and their five children, whose battle for the right to remain in Scotland — after almost nine years living and running a business here — came to an end last year when they gave up their Highland dream and returned to Canada voluntarily.
Several other cases are still outstanding months after they were first raised.
Russell and Ellen Felber relocated from New York to Inverness in 2011 where they bought a run-down building mostly used as student accommodation and spent £400,000 transforming it into an award winning guest house.
Their leave to remain here was refused and they are awaiting an appeal ruling.
Also awaiting an appeal ruling is American Scott Johnson, who has a Scottish wife Nicola and Scots-born daughter Lauryn.
He has been refused a settlement visa because he applied for it from Scotland — in the weeks during his recuperation after a heart attack.
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