Richard Andrew Smith v Home Office: disputed identity claim fails in deportation appeal

A man who has used at least three identities over almost four decades has failed to persuade the First-tier Tribunal that he is a British citizen, in a deportation appeal turning entirely on a disputed question of identity.

The appellant, who brought his appeal as Richard Andrew Smith, is subject to a deportation order following a 2003 conviction for possessing a firearm with intent to resist arrest, his second firearms-related offence, for which he received a life sentence with a minimum term of just over three years. The Home Office's position is that his true identity is Barrington Winston Douglas, a Jamaican national who arrived in the UK in December 1987 on a visitor visa and overstayed. His application to revoke the deportation order, made in October 2024, was treated as a human rights claim and refused, giving rise to this appeal.

Because a foreign criminal sentenced to at least four years' imprisonment can only avoid deportation by showing very compelling circumstances, and the appellant accepted he could not meet that threshold if found not to be British, the case turned solely on whether he had proved, on the balance of probabilities, that he was the British-born Richard Andrew Smith named on a birth certificate he relied upon.

Judge Swaney found he had not. The judgement traces a long and inconsistent history of identities used by the appellant, including Carl Barrington Johnson, in whose name he had a criminal record dating to 1988, and Barrington Winston Douglas, matched to him via biometric data after the Home Office withdrew a previous status letter recognising him as a British citizen. Immigration officer reports from the early 1990s recorded shifting accounts of his upbringing, including claims of having been taken to the United States as a child and later abandoned, and record checks that failed to corroborate several of the identities he gave.

The judge rejected the argument that a status letter issued in 2018, following a Windrush-scheme application supported only by the birth certificate, amounted to confirmation of the appellant's identity, finding it confirmed only that the person named in the certificate was British, not that the appellant was that person. The letter was later withdrawn once biometric checks linked him to the Douglas identity.

The judge was also critical of the absence of any corroborating evidence one would ordinarily expect from a person who had spent his entire life in the UK, including school, social services, employment or banking records, and found no adequate explanation for the gap. She rejected as a red herring the submission that hostile environment policies explained the absence of such records, noting that a genuine British citizen would not have been affected by them. The tribunal placed no weight on the fact that the appellant had given evidence on oath, holding that the obligation to tell the truth applies regardless, and gave no credence to submissions that his Christian faith made him more likely to be truthful, noting he had continued offending since professing to have found religion in 2016.

Having found that the appellant was not a British citizen and was therefore liable to deportation, the judge held that the Home Office's decision was lawful and proportionate, noting the limited weight attributable to his private life given his lack of community ties and periods spent in custody. The appeal was dismissed and no fee award made.