Section 256 — Immigration Act 2009: Court to approve summary of allegations

256 Court to approve summary of allegations (1) The purpose of this section is to give an appellant, a respondent, or an affected person, as the case may be, an opportunity to comment on potentially prejudicial information in the course of proceedings involving classified information in a court. (2) If proceedings before a court involve classified information,— (a) the chief executive of the relevant agency must develop, and provide to the court for approval, a summary of the allegations arising from the classified information; and (b) the court must— (i) approve the summary developed under paragraph (a); or (ii) modify the summary and then approve it; and (c) following approval (with or without modification) of the summary, the court must provide the summary to the appellant, respondent, or affected person, the special advocate, and counsel assisting the court and the special adviser (if any and if relevant). (3) For the purposes of making its decision, the court may rely on the classified information only to the extent that the allegations arising from the information can be summarised without disclosing classified information that would be likely to prejudice the interests described in section 7(3) . (4) In determining whether, or how, to modify the summary, the court— (a) must have regard to the views of the relevant agency; and (b) may have regard to the views of the person who made the decision to which the proceedings apply or who made the application to which the proceedings apply. (5) Nothing in this section requires the summary to— (a) list any documents or other source material containing classified information; or (b) detail the contents of any documents or other source material containing classified information; or (c) specify the source of any documents or other source material containing classified information. (6) An updated summary must be prepared and provided in the same way as if it were a summary prepared under subsection (2), if— (a) any classified information that was proposed to be relied on in the course of the proceedings is withdrawn (unless all the information is withdrawn); or (b) further relevant classified information becomes available that will be relied on in the course of the proceedings.