11.The Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 (“the 1999 Act”) introduced a one-stop appeal requiring an adjudicator considering an immigration appeal to deal with any other appealable matters raised by the applicant at the same time. The provisions in Part 5 of the Act aim to re-structure the appeals system and will:
Define the specific immigration decisions which attract a right of appeal;
Provide for asylum or human rights claims to be certified where the claim is clearly unfounded or where the person is to be removed to a country of which they are not a national and the Secretary of State has no reason to believe that their rights under the ECHR will be breached in that country. The effect of such certification is that the person cannot, other than in limited cases, appeal against the immigration decision while in the United Kingdom;
Enable the certification of applications, preventing a further right of appeal where a person could have made the application earlier or raised it at an earlier appeal but did not do so;
Introduce a statutory review process as an alternative remedy to judicial review for challenges to the Immigration Appeal Tribunal decision to refuse permission to appeal;
Enable rules to provide a statutory closure date to prevent multiple adjournments of cases at the adjudicator stage; and
Enable rules to provide wasted cost powers and a ‘no merit’ certificate which can be issued by the Immigration Appellate Authority.