Held, claim allowed. (1) At the heart of the claimant’s complaint was the fact that at the initial interview the immigration officer’s concerns as to the authenticity of the documentation relating to his English qualifications had never been made clear to him. That was a view only later expressed by the Secretary of State in her IS 82 decision, and consequently the claimant had never been given the opportunity to explain the position. From the terms in which the IS 82 notice had been written, it could only reasonably be understood as alleging deception on the part of the claimant. Where something as important as a decision to cancel leave to enter was being contemplated on the assumption of falsified documentation, procedural fairness required that a very clear allegation to that effect was put to a passenger. It was not enough for them to be left to infer that that was the case. The fact that such inference was expected to be discerned second-hand through an interpreter exacerbated the difficulties experienced by a passenger, let alone in circumstances where it was evident that public officials were intervening potentially to rescind permission to enter. The first time the claimant was alerted to the allegation of deception was when he was served with the IS 82 document, in which the link between the claimant’s apparent lack of capability in English and the consequent questioning of authenticity of his documentation was spelled out for the first time. But by then it was too late because the decision had already been taken and the claimant no longer had the opportunity to make representations to dissuade officers from their decision. The request for an Urdu interpreter was not necessarily inconsistent with the claimant’s case that he could speak English to a suitable level to study in English. When it became apparent that there was real jeopardy for him it was hardly surprising that he elected to conduct interviews in his mother tongue rather than in English. He was no doubt anxious to ensure that he did not misunderstand any vital detail and that he was able to get across his point of view clearly. That was not inconsistent with the claimant’s stated preference on his visa application form to converse in English. In answering that question he might well not have anticipated having to converse in a second language on a matter of critical importance in circumstances of extreme anxiety compounded by fatigue from a long journey. The claimant had been deprived of any opportunity for explanation by the procedure adopted by the Secretary of State, which rendered the decision unlawful (paras 46, 47, 69, 70, 72, 82).

(2) The correct approach to viewing the substance of the decision to cancel the claimant’s leave was to apply ordinary public law principles. Having regard to all the evidence available to the immigration officers, the decision was one that they were rationally able to reach (paras 97, 100, 101).

(3) In most cases involving claims of unlawful detention the detention in question ran to several months. In the present case the claimant’s detention had been for such a short period it could not properly be termed unlawful. Until shortly before the beginning of the third interview the Secretary of State had been assessing the evidence against the claimant and reaching a view as to whether his leave to enter should be cancelled. That was all a necessary part of the due process in reaching a decision whether to cancel his leave to enter. The claimant had been detained pursuant to paragraph 16 of Schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971, which conferred on the Secretary of State a power to detain pending the completion of an examination into a passenger’s circumstances, in particular whether grounds existed for refusing or cancelling leave to enter. The power of detention was not unconstrained and was subject to, among other things, common law principles. However, there was nothing in the circumstances of the case which rendered the claimant’s detention unlawful according to such principles (paras 121, 122, 123, 124).