Say what you mean…

Interesting* procedural case from the Immigration Tribunal.

PAA (FtT: Oral decision - written reasons) Iraq [2019] UKUT 13 (IAC)
https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKUT/IAC/2019/13.html

First-tier Tribunal Judge hears an appeal. Announces at the end of the hearing that he has allowed it. Then issues a written decision notice and statement of reasons refusing the appeal. What happens next?

Upper Tribunal rules that because the First-tier Tribunal has a power to give a decision orally (Rule 33(1) for our purposes), once the Judge had done so, he became functus officio - which is to say that he had no further power to deal with the appeal aside from issuing the relevant notices confirming his decision and giving reasons for it. Specifically, he had no power to issue an inconsistent written decision. The oral decision allowing the appeal therefore stood and the written “decision” counted for nothing.

However, because the written decision notice was still - on its face - a Tribunal decision, it still needed to be disposed of as part of a further appeal. It was not open to the parties just to ignore it and there was a sort of stalemate until the Upper Tribunal looked at the case. And of course, the party who lost according to the oral decision probably wouldn’t have much difficulty appealing against it given that the statement of reasons would be completely inadequate. But there you go - I think the same logic would apply in the Social Entitlement Chamber in the unlikely event that something like this came up.

*Well, to a certain sort of person…

I had this once with a social security appeal.  It was dealt with as a “slip of the pen” error and the Judge apologised for any inconvenience caused.  (I had put in a request for written reasons as a back up, but withdrew that once it was sorted out.)

I’ve had this too. Lodged a complaint where my increasingly frantic attempts to find a missing appellant at the CJC in Manchester resulted in a tribunal starting without me. Mightily annoyed that the PO, who was fully aware of where I was and what I was doing, reneged on a commitment to ask the tribunal to wait for 10 minutes. Walked in and was told verbally by a judge I had previously had much respect for that they had heard in the absence of both myself and the appellant and the latter had lost. I queried whether they were aware I was in the building and whether they’d considered the justness of proceeding. Silence.

The tribunal then, rather bizarrely, started. I must say I was for once in my life completely flummoxed and had to explicitly ask how and why we suddenly appeared to be hearing the case (still in the absence of the appellant) when the first thing I’d been told was that it had been heard and lost. I was then asked whether I wanted to go ahead or not!!! I explained that I did not (the appellant really did need to be there but had decided that taking her poorly child to the GP was more important than the hearing but also managed to leave her phone with her partner who had let the battery expire) but on we ploughed.

So, I have a verbal decision that we have lost and another verbal statement that the case is now being heard. At the end, the case appears to be adjourned for medical evidence. The summary decision is posted out. None of the foregoing is referenced at all. A completely different chronology is detailed and the conclusion is not that we were adjourned but that we lost.

A complaint was lodged but went nowhere. I suspect the RJ simply didn’t know what to make of it as the version of the judge did not match mine at all; the PO declined to contribute as did the other panel members. Client was otherwise occupied and decided we wouldn’t go for a set aside or UT.