IA and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 1516

A Palestinian family of six living in Gaza applied for entry clearance to the UK to join their sponsor, the father’s younger brother, a British citizen. The Court of Appeal allowed the Secretary of State’s appeal, holding that the tribunals below had applied the wrong legal test for family life between adult siblings under Article 8(1) ECHR, and that even if family life had existed, the Upper Tribunal had materially erred in its proportionality assessment under Article 8(2) by giving insufficient weight to immigration control policies and excessive weight to the family’s circumstances in a warzone.

Facts

The family comprised a father, mother and four children (aged 18, 17, 8 and 7 at the date of the FTT hearing in September 2024). They were Palestinian and had lived in Gaza since 1994. The sponsor, the father’s younger brother, had left Gaza in 2007 to live and work in the UK and was now a British citizen employed by a media organisation with a net monthly income of at least £3,700.

Prior to the sponsor’s departure, the brothers had a close relationship. The sponsor also knew the father’s wife, a cousin, since childhood and had a relationship with the elder children. The two youngest children were born after the sponsor left Gaza.

Following the 7 October 2023 attacks and the ensuing conflict between Israel and Hamas, the family was displaced when their home was destroyed by an airstrike. They were living in extremely dangerous conditions — initially in the al-Mawasi humanitarian zone and later in the Nuseirat refugee camp in an unsuitable summer tent damaged by gunfire. There was a dire humanitarian situation with a breakdown of law and order.

The family had an anti-Hamas profile: the sponsor and the father had historically been members of Fatah or worked for the Palestinian Authority. Two uncles had been arrested by Hamas and another killed in November 2016. The father’s links to the Palestinian Authority precluded him from finding employment in Gaza.

Since the conflict began, the brothers had been in regular telephone contact. The sponsor had been sending money to the family when possible and had made arrangements to move house to accommodate the family in the UK. The sponsor suffered from PTSD triggered by the risks to the family, and it was likely his mental health would deteriorate significantly if the family came to harm or were unable to enter the UK.

On 25 January 2024, the family applied for entry clearance using a Ukraine Family Scheme form (as the SSHD’s guidance directed applicants to use the form most closely matching their circumstances). It was common ground that the family could not qualify under the Immigration Rules. On 30 May 2024, entry clearance was refused.

The FTT dismissed the family’s appeal. It found that family life under Article 8(1) had existed between the sponsor and the family since the start of the Gaza conflict, but that refusal of entry clearance was not disproportionate under Article 8(2), holding that the creation of resettlement policies for conflict zones was a matter for government and Parliament.

The UT allowed the family’s appeal, upheld the FTT’s finding on family life, found errors of law in the FTT’s proportionality assessment, and remade the decision, concluding that the refusal was a disproportionate interference with family life. The SSHD appealed to the Court of Appeal.

Issues

Ground 1: Family Life under Article 8(1)

What is the correct legal test for determining whether family life exists between adult siblings for the purposes of Article 8(1) ECHR? Did the tribunals apply the correct test?

Ground 2: Whose Article 8 Rights Are Engaged?

Where family life is found to exist between a UK-based sponsor and family members outside the jurisdiction of the ECHR, should the proportionality balance consider the free-standing Article 8 rights of the family outside the UK, or only those of the sponsor within the jurisdiction?

Ground 3: Proportionality Balance under Article 8(2)

Did the UT correctly weigh the relevant factors in the proportionality balance — in particular, the nature of the family life, the best interests of the children, the family’s risk of death in Gaza, and the importance of immigration control?

Judgment

The Court of Appeal (Sir Geoffrey Vos MR, Dingemans SPT and Elisabeth Laing LJ) unanimously allowed the SSHD’s appeal on Grounds 1 and 3 and in part on Ground 2.

The Court undertook a comprehensive review of ECtHR and domestic authority on the meaning of family life between adult siblings.

The Court held that the consistent jurisprudence of the ECtHR, from S & S v United Kingdom (10375/83, 10 December 1984) through to Kumari v The Netherlands (44051/20, 10 December 2024) and Demirci v Hungary (48302/21, 6 May 2025), established that family life under Article 8(1) “is normally limited to the core family and that there will be no family life between parents and adult children or adult siblings unless they can demonstrate ‘additional elements of dependence, involving more than the normal emotional ties'” (Kumari at [35]; Beoku-Betts v SSHD [2008] UKHL 39, [2009] 1 AC 115 at [39]).

This was to be contrasted with the lower test of “real, committed or effective support” derived from Sedley LJ’s obiter dictum at [17] in Kugathas v SSHD [2003] EWCA Civ 31, [2003] INLR 170. The Court held that Sedley LJ’s formulation was “at best obiter” and that he was not right to read down the additional elements of dependency test to an irreducible minimum of real, committed or effective support. “Real support” might in some cases amount to a very low hurdle indeed, whereas “the word ‘dependency’ denotes a significant relationship.”

The Court traced how several domestic decisions — including Rai v Entry Clearance Officer, New Delhi [2017] EWCA Civ 320, Uddin v SSHD [2020] EWCA Civ 338, [2020] 1 WLR 1562, and Saliu v Entry Clearance Officer [2021] EWCA Civ 1847, [2022] Imm AR 418 — had “lost sight of” the additional elements of dependency test from the ECtHR jurisprudence and from Beoku-Betts at [39].

The Court clarified that: (i) the existence of real, committed or effective support was relevant to, but not conclusive of, the additional elements of dependency test; (ii) it was not necessary to show exclusive or complete dependency; (iii) physical or mental disability, financial dependency, and a combination of other factors could all play a part; and (iv) the evaluation was fact-sensitive and case-by-case.

The FTT had expressly applied the lower “real, committed or effective support” test and stated it was lower than dependency. The UT had endorsed this, wrongly finding no error of law in the FTT’s approach.

Remaking the decision on the facts found by the tribunals, the Court held that no family life existed between the sponsor and the family. The brothers had not cohabited for 17 years. Although close emotional ties had been restored since the war and the sponsor had provided financial support and made plans to accommodate the family, none of this amounted to the level of dependence required.

The Court accepted that family life under Article 8 is “unitary” — the right to respect for the family life of one necessarily encompasses the right to respect for the family life of others with whom it is enjoyed (Beoku-Betts at [4]; Abbas v SSHD [2017] EWCA Civ 1393, [2018] 1 WLR 533 at [16]).

However, the Court held that persons outside the territory of the ECHR do not have their own free-standing Article 8 rights. The correct position was that the main focus of the proportionality exercise must be “the family life of the person within the jurisdiction of article 1 (here, the sponsor), but that family life had to be considered as being a unitary family life with his brother or the family outside the UK.” This was not a distinction without a difference: the UK was not under a positive obligation to admit every member of the wider family of a person within its territory.

The UT had erred in relying on UT-level authorities rather than MN v Belgium (3599/18, 5 May 2020), Beoku-Betts and Abbas, and its erroneous focus on the entire family’s Article 8 rights was relevant to its treatment of the children’s best interests.

The Court held that the UT made several errors in its proportionality assessment:

Weight of family life: The family life found was recent, contingent and precarious. The sponsor and the family had never cohabited. The relationship had been revived in the knowledge that the family had no right to enter the UK. Following Jeunesse v The Netherlands (12738/10, 3 October 2014) at [108], where family life was created when immigration status was precarious, only exceptional circumstances would justify a finding of disproportionate interference. The UT gave this factor excessive weight.

Best interests of the children: The Court held that while the UT had expressly directed itself that the children’s best interests were not paramount (following IAA & Ors v United Kingdom (25960/13, 8 March 2016) at [46] and El Ghatet v Switzerland (56971/10, 8 November 2016) at [26]), it did not give that direction proper effect. The UT’s decision was “replete with references to the dire situation faced by the family and the children as a result of the war in Gaza” and this “distorted the balance.”

Risk of death in Gaza: The UK was not responsible for risks faced by persons in a foreign warzone, and focusing so closely on the effects of the war was the wrong approach to the Article 8(2) balance.

Immigration control: The Court emphasised, following R (Agyarko) v SSHD [2017] UKSC 11, [2017] 1 WLR 823 at [46]–[47], that courts must “attach considerable weight to the SSHD’s immigration policies at a general level.” The Rules represented, with Parliamentary approval, the SSHD’s view of where the balance lay. The requirement for “exceptional circumstances” for leave outside the Rules was not inconsistent with the ECHR. While the UT had stated it was placing considerable weight on the Rules, “it failed to do so” in practice. The absence of a Gaza resettlement scheme was not a neutral factor but reflected the Government’s policy position.

Remaking the proportionality balance, the Court held that even if family life had existed, the balance would have come down “heavily in favour of refusing entry clearance.” Very exceptional or compelling circumstances had not been shown.

Implications

This judgment is significant in several respects:

1. Definitive statement on the test for family life between adult siblings. The Court confirmed that the correct test under Article 8(1) is the “additional elements of dependence, involving more than the normal emotional ties” formulation consistently applied by the ECtHR from S & S v United Kingdom (1984) through Kumari (2024) and Demirci (2025). Sedley LJ’s lower test of “real, committed or effective support” from Kugathas was obiter and does not represent the law. Several Court of Appeal decisions — Rai, Uddin and Saliu — were identified as having lost sight of the ECtHR standard. Practitioners should now apply the Kumari/Beoku-Betts formulation, treating real, committed or effective support as relevant evidence but not the test itself.

2. Territorial limits of Article 8 and the concept of unitary family life. While family life is unitary, the primary focus of the proportionality exercise must be the Article 8 rights of the person within the UK’s jurisdiction. Family members outside the territory of the ECHR do not have free-standing Article 8 rights, although their position is encompassed within the unitary family life shared with the person in the UK. This has practical consequences for how tribunals approach the best interests of children who are outside the jurisdiction.

3. Weight of immigration control in Article 8(2). The Court strongly endorsed the approach in Agyarko, requiring courts and tribunals to attach considerable weight to the SSHD’s immigration policies as reflected in the Rules, even in cases involving extreme humanitarian circumstances. Very exceptional or compelling circumstances must be shown for entry clearance outside the Rules. The absence of a resettlement scheme for a particular conflict zone reflects a policy choice by government and Parliament that tribunals must respect, not a neutral factor to be discounted.

4. Limits on the weight of children’s best interests and warzone conditions. While the best interests of children are a primary consideration, they cannot operate as a “trump card” requiring admission of children who would be better off in a contracting state (IAA & Ors v United Kingdom at [46]). Extreme conditions in a foreign warzone, however grave, must not be permitted to distort the Article 8(2) balance such that immigration control policies are overridden.

5. Practical effect. The Court noted that the SSHD had already agreed, subject to conditions, to provide entry clearance to the family, and that allowing the appeal would not affect the family’s situation. Permission to appeal had been granted because of the points of general importance raised.

Verdict

Appeal allowed on Grounds 1 and 3, and in part on Ground 2.

Ground 1: No family life within the autonomous meaning of Article 8(1) existed between the sponsor, his brother, and his brother’s family in Gaza. The tribunals applied the wrong legal test.

Ground 2 (in part): Had family life existed, the proportionality exercise should have focused primarily on the Article 8 rights of the sponsor (as the person within the UK’s jurisdiction), considering his family life on a unitary basis. The UT erred in treating the family’s Article 8 rights as free-standing.

Ground 3: Had family life existed, refusal of entry clearance would not have been a disproportionate interference. No very exceptional or compelling circumstances were demonstrated. The UT gave insufficient weight to the SSHD’s immigration policies and excessive weight to the family’s warzone circumstances and the children’s best interests.

Source: IA and Others v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 1516