Attorney General of the Cayman Islands and another v Joey Delosa Buray and another
[2025] UKPC 22
28 Apr 2025
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The Privy Council has today handed down a judgment addressing the circumstances in which a declaration of incompatibility can be made in the Cayman Islands. The case related to the Cayman Islands’ immigration points system for permanent residence applications. Lord Leggatt’s judgment on behalf of the Board concluded that the Cayman Islands Court of Appeal had been wrong to find and declare that the relevant immigration legislation was incompatible with the right to respect for private and family life.
The Attorney General of the Cayman Islands had appealed against the Court of Appeal’s declaration of incompatibility. The appeal succeeded on all grounds. The Court of Appeal had erred in deciding whether section 37 of the Immigration Act and/or the points system was compatible with section 9 of the Bill of Rights (which protects the right to respect for private and family life) on a hypothetical basis, in circumstances where that question did not arise on the facts of the cases before them. The finding of incompatibility was also erroneous on its own terms, in that the Cayman Islands’ immigration legislation as a whole (which included a provision allowing the Cabinet to grant exemptions for any purpose in appropriate cases) was capable of operating compatibly with the right to respect for private and family life.
The full judgment can be found here.
Tom Hickman KC and Will Bordell appeared on behalf of the Attorney General of the Cayman Islands and the Immigration Appeals Tribunal.
