Mr Justice Chamberlain has today handed down his judgment in the matter of BEL, BEB, BCC, BEC, BKJ and BDM v Secretary of State for Foreign Commonwealth and Development Affairs [AC-2025-LON-000997], finding that the Foreign Secretary’s refusal to provide consular assistance to our clients to exit Gaza so that they can travel onwards to the UK was unlawful.
Our clients, anonymised as BEL and others, are six Palestinians from Gaza (a father, mother, and four children, two who are young adults and two minors). BEL’s brother, BSJ, is a British citizen living in the UK. They are at constant risk of death, serious injury and starvation in Gaza. They have been displaced countless times and one of the children and BEL were very recently injured by a tank shell explosion at an aid distribution. They are lacking access to food, water and adequate shelter.
Liz Barratt, partner and Head of our Immigration team, comments:
This judgment is very welcome for our clients who made their applications for a visa in January 2024. After a lengthy appeal process the Home Office confirmed in January 2025 that the family would be issued visas providing they first gave their biometrics at a visa application centre. They have been waiting to leave Gaza since then and have been enduring horrific conditions and live under constant threat. We hope that the Foreign Office will consider the judgment carefully and act quickly to reconsider their approach to this case and the policy more widely so that our clients and others in a similar position can be assisted to leave Gaza. We hear every day of the terrible conditions in Gaza for the civilian population caught in this conflict and we very much hope that the Foreign Office will take the steps we have asked: namely approach the Israeli authorities for exit permission for our clients.
Their claim for judicial review challenged the Foreign Secretary’s refusal to provide them with consular assistance to be able to leave Gaza. Without that assistance, it is impossible for them to leave Gaza, as the borders are closed and controlled by Israel. The family have visas to be able to be united with BSJ in the UK (subject to final biometric checks), which were granted in January 2025. This is the same family whose grants of entry clearance were the subject of much – largely inaccurate – discussion at Prime Minister’s Questions and in the media in February 2025. Since then, and the Foreign Secretary’s refusal to help them, they have been surviving in dire conditions with very little food and BEL and one of the children have sustained injuries at an aid distribution.
Our clients fall outside of the current FCDO criteria for people they are willing to assist to leave Gaza (which requires the family member in the UK to be a spouse/partner or minor child of those in Gaza). They requested assistance on an exceptional basis, but their request was refused as the Foreign Secretary said that their circumstances were not sufficiently exceptional when compared to others in Gaza, and that providing consular assistance uses “diplomatic capital” which needs to be preserved to assist in exceptional cases. This is in spite of Israel’s public position on the matter, and in spite of the Israeli government contacting the Foreign Office in May to invite names for evacuation from Gaza. Our clients asked the Foreign Secretary to reconsider after this, but he refused to assist the family again and repeated the assessment that our clients’ circumstances were not considered to be exceptional.
Our clients challenged the decision on the basis that (i) it was irrational, (ii) it was reached in a manner that was procedurally unfair, (iii) the Foreign Secretary failed to apply his own policy; and (iv) it breached their and BSJ’s right to a family life, under Article 8 ECHR.
In his judgment, Mr Justice Chamberlain has found that the refusal decision was flawed and that our clients’ case must be considered again.
First, he found that it was “irrational” for the Foreign Secretary to consider that Israel’s attitude to Palestinians leaving Gaza was irrelevant to the decision whether to try to help, as the level of “diplomatic capital” required would be lower in circumstances where this accorded with current Israeli policy.
Second, Mr Justice Chamberlain found that the Foreign Secretary did not properly consider how and if our clients’ grant of conditional entry clearance, which was granted on account of their very close connection to their family member in the UK, was sufficient to consider them as exceptional, or as a reason to extend the Foreign Office’s policy for assistance.
Third, related to the above, the Foreign Secretary justified his refusal because there were likely to be many other people in Gaza in the same position as our clients. He took this approach even though the decision-maker didn’t know, and wasn’t told, how many other people in Gaza were in a similar position to our clients. Mr Justice Chamberlain asked the Foreign Office to provide the numbers.
At the hearing the Foreign Secretary’s representative stated that the Foreign Office was aware of just 38 other people in Gaza who have a right to enter the UK and who need Foreign Office help to leave. On the day of the hearing, the Foreign Office were not aware of any remaining British civilians in Gaza (the last had come forward in April and left on the day of the hearing). The decision maker was not aware of these numbers when refusing our clients’ requests for assistance. Mr Justice Chamberlain found that this “gap” in the Foreign Secretary’s decision-making was irrational: “If a decision-maker is concerned that acceding to a request in one case risks opening the floodgates, he or she ought to make some attempt to understand whether what lies behind the gates is really a flood, or only a trickle.” (§§119-121).
The Foreign Secretary must now make a new, lawful, decision on our clients’ request for assistance to leave Gaza. In the brutal and life-threatening conditions in which they are surviving, we urge the Foreign Secretary to assist our clients to leave Gaza, so that they can be reunited in safety with their family in the UK.
Jenni Whitaker, solicitor in our Immigration team, comments:
The judgment is very welcome and could not come at a more crucial time for our clients. They are surviving the unimaginable. They are injured, starving and desperate to be able to join their family in the UK. It has been six months since the Home Office granted their in principle visas to enter the UK and conditions have deteriorated significantly since. We very much hope that David Lammy and his department will now do the right, just and humane thing and urgently agree to assist our clients, and the handful of others in a similar position, to leave Gaza to be reunited with family in the UK.
The full judgment can be found here.
BEL, BEB, BCC, BEC, BKJ and BDM were represented in the court proceedings by Jenni Whitaker and Liz Barratt of Bindmans, supported by trainee solicitor Shivani Soni, together with Tim Owen KC (Matrix), Ben Bundock (One Pump Court) and Tim James-Matthews (Matrix) of counsel. The family were previously represented by David Chirico KC of One Pump Court.
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