Citizenship

In deciding whether applicants for naturalisation met the requirement that they were of good character within para 1(1) of Sch 1 to the British Nationality Act 1981, the secretary of state had to consider all aspects of their character. The statutory test was not whether applicants had previous criminal convictions—it was much wider in scope than that. In order to conduct a proper assessment, the secretary of state had to have regard to the outline facts of any offence and any mitigating factors. She also had to have regard to the severity of the sentence, within the sentencing range, as that might be a valuable indicator of the gravity of the offending behaviour in the eyes of the sentencing court. The secretary of state was entitled to adopt a policy on the way in which criminal convictions would normally be considered by her caseworkers, but it should not be applied mechanistically and inflexibly. There had to be a comprehensive assessment of each applicant’s character,