Secretary of State for the Home Department v E3 and N3 the evidence available to him was such as to enable him rationally to conclude that there was ‘in general no serious risk of persecution’. 34 The principle which runs through these cases leaves it to the Secretary of State to take a view, so long as this follows an adequate procedure and is rationally supported on the evidence. 35 It does not, for instance, require the Secretary of State not to be satisfied of a relevant fact if reasonable alternative views exist. But it does arguably point to a more searching approach than has been applied in s 40 BNA 1981 cases to date. And a more penetrative approach is arguably strongly supported given importance of the subject matter — citizenship status — is judicially acknowledged. Precisely this has occurred in another deprivation of citizenship case in the Supreme Court, Pham v Secretary of State for the Home Department. 36 Lord Carnwath JSC (with whom Lord Neuberger PSC, Baroness Hale DPSC and Lord Wilson JSC agreed) observed that the sensitivity of judicial review to context ‘[applies] with even greater force in my view in a case such as the present where the issue concerns the removal of a status as fundamental, in domestic, European and international law, as that of citizenship’. 37 Nor does the statutory appeal context in a case such as E3 and N3 provide a valid basis for distinction from the approach in the Tameside and Javed cases. 38 CONCLUSION The decision of the Court in E3 and N3 confirms and brings together previous threads of jurisprudence regarding the standard of proof in appeals against deprivation of British citizenship status under s 40(2) BNA 1981. It reconfirms that once the Secretary of State has concluded that s 40(4) does not prevent the making of an order under s 40(2), the burden shifts to the affected individual. In addition, it shows relatively scanty examination of the preliminary duty upon the Secretary of State, and supports the earlier characterisation of this in Hashi as ‘a comparatively easy burden to discharge’. 39 In doing so it leaves unaddressed and highlights — no doubt unintentionally — an apparent friction with the wider administrative law treatment of measures invoking subjective judgment by the executive. 34 35 36 37 38 39 ibid. See also Michael Fordham, Judicial Review Handbook (6th edn, Hart 2012) 449–52 [39.3.6]. Pham (n 2). ibid [60]. The approach of a court or tribunal to identification of error of law, on judicial review and on statutory appeal respectively, has long been held to be similar. E v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2004] EWCA Civ 49, [42]: ‘it has become a generally safe working rule that the substantive grounds for intervention are identical’. E3 and N3 (n 3) [32], citing Hashi (n 6) [23]. 171