Hossain & Ors v The Home Office

On 10 June 2026, the High Court (Mrs Justice Heather Williams DBE, [2026] EWHC 1413 (KB)) granted the strike-out applications of two claimants (C6 and C11), ruling that the Home Office is prevented by issue estoppel from alleging that those claimants obtained their results in the Test of English for International Communication ("TOEIC") by fraud.

The claims arise in the context of the ‘TOEIC scandal’, where, following revelations of widespread cheating on TOEIC tests taken at some test centres, the Secretary of State for the Home Department cancelled or refused leave to remain in over 40,000 cases where people were said to have cheated. The claimants seek damages and declaratory relief for breaches of the Data Protection Act 1998, the Data Protection Act 2018, and GDPR/UK GDPR, as well as rights under Article 8 ECHR, in relation to immigration decisions taken against them. C6 and C11 had each successfully appealed those immigration decisions in the First-tier Tribunal, which found that the Claimants had not cheated in their TOIEC tests. The Secretary of State chose not to appeal those decisions of the FTT.

The Court held that issue estoppel prevented the Home Office from re-making the same allegations of fraud in the present proceedings. The Home Office sought to escape the estoppel by arguing that subsequent Upper Tribunal guidance in DK and RK [2022] UKUT 112 (IAC) and Varkey [2024] UKUT 142 (IAC) constituted a change in the law engaging the exception to the principle of issue estoppel recognised in Arnold v National Westminster Bank Plc [1991] 2 AC 93. The Court rejected that argument, and found that the rule in Hollington v Hewthorn [1943] KB 587 applied to prevent the Home Office from relying on DK and RK and Varkey in proceedings before the High Court in the claimants’ claims. The Court also rejected an argument, based on the principle in Takhar v Gracefield Developments Ltd [2019] UKSC 13, that the Home Office did not need to show that any new evidence which it sought to rely on could not, with reasonable diligence, have been obtained in the FTT proceedings. The Court found that the principle in Takhar was confined to the situation of an action to set aside a judgment on the grounds of fraud, in circumstances where the relevant allegation of fraud had not been raised in the original proceedings.

The Court declined to strike out the fraud allegation in the claim of a third claimant (C2), whose appeal in the FTT had not proceeded to a determination, finding that no abuse of process had been established.

Tom de la Mare KC, and Isabelle Agerbak (instructed by Bindmans LLP) acted for the Claimants.

The judgment may be found here.