Family Law

(House of Lords; Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, Baroness Hale of Richmond, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, and Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury; 30 July 2008)

The statutory scheme under which people subject to immigration control required permission from the Secretary of State, in the form of a certificate of approval, if they wished to marry other than in accordance with the rites of the Church of England, was a disproportionate interference with the right to marry. The Secretary of State's policy was to refuse such certificates to anyone who did not have a valid right to enter or remain in the UK for more than 6 months, with more than 3 months of that period remaining, but these conditions had no relevance to the genuineness of the proposed marriage, which was the only relevant criterion for determining whether permission was to be given.

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