A holidaymaker who was banned from returning to the UK has finally won a landmark legal battle after a Home Office error wrongly recorded him as a deported criminal.
The man, known as A, had gone on a brief holiday with his mother but was removed from his flight back to Britain after being told he had been deported years before due to a long criminal record.
The false allegation was put down to an IT error that mixed up his profile with that of a deported criminal.
It took seven months and rounds of legal action until the man was allowed to return to the UK.
The man was removed from his flight back to Britain after being told he had been deported years before due to a long criminal record
GETTY
Other people could face similar issues, with the new Home Office immigration database having allegedly misrecorded over 76,000 people.
The man’s lawyer, James Packer, said they were relieved A’s “Kafkaesque nightmare” was over.
He said: “He was wrongly exiled from the UK for nearly seven months due to an entirely avoidable Home Office error.”
At the time of the incident, A has been waiting for a decision on his application for residency in the UK under the EU settlement scheme.
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For over four years, he had followed up with the Home Office, which kept citing delays due to concerns about criminal charges.
After providing proof of a clean criminal record, he took a short holiday with his mother only to be told he could not fly back home.
Although the Home Office initially acknowledged the file had probably been confused with that of another person, A then received a letter stating they had concluded there was no error, and that he was in fact the deportee using a different identity.
The limited information given to A and the deportee’s history of using fake identities made it difficult for him to prove he was not the criminal.
Other people could face similar issues, with the new Home Office immigration database having allegedly misrecorded over 76,000 people
GETTYHowever, after A brought a judicial review claim forward, the Home Office finally conceded they had made a mistake and allowed him to return home.
The man’s legal team was able to prove that while the real deportee was incarcerated, A had been studying at university, going to local shops and going to the gym.
A is now planning to sue the Home Office for “substantial damages”.
Due to the incident, the Information Commissioner’s Office also launched an investigation into the new IT system which had been leading to “merged identities”.
