4 K2 v. THE UNITED KINGDOM DECISION 14. Finally, the High Court considered the applicant’s third submission to be “unarguable”, since neither citizenship nor the right to enter a territory of a signatory State were Convention rights and, in any case, the applicant was in precisely the same position as a person abroad who had never had British citizenship. Neither would have the right of appeal against a free-standing decision to exclude on conducive grounds, but both would have a right of appeal against a decision to refuse entry clearance. Although the applicant had not applied for entry clearance, if his appeal against the deprivation of citizenship were to be successful, the Secretary of State’s power to exclude him would fall away. (b) The Court of Appeal 15. The applicant appealed to the Court of Appeal, which gave judgment on 21 May 2012. He again submitted that the Crown had no common-law or prerogative power to exclude an individual from the United Kingdom pending his appeal against a decision to deprive him of citizenship. However, the Court of Appeal agreed with the lower court that the legislative provisions could not be so construed. In reaching this conclusion, it noted that the reason why the applicant had to conduct his appeal from outside the United Kingdom was not the Secretary of State’s decision to exclude him but rather his decision to flee the country before he was required to surrender to his bail. 16. He further submitted that the Secretary of State’s decision to exclude him from the United Kingdom was so procedurally unfair as to be legally insupportable. Insofar as this argument was based on the common law, the Court of Appeal affirmed the findings of the lower court. The applicant was asserting a positive claim that the court should direct the Secretary of State to facilitate his return to the United Kingdom, and there was no warrant in the legislation or rules for any such obligation. In any case, it considered that the Secretary of State had put forward a substantial case to the effect that the applicant would be perfectly able to pursue his appeal from Sudan, but saw no reason to disagree with the judge’s conclusion that the applicant could travel to a safe third country. 17. Furthermore, the Court of Appeal agreed that EU law had no application to the case as there had been no actual, attempted or purported exercise of any right conferred by EU law. 18. Finally, the applicant submitted that he had suffered discrimination by being prevented from attending his statutory appeal, in contrast to an alien who would be entitled to be present in order to appeal against the revocation of leave to remain. Lord Justice Laws, in his leading judgment, accepted that an alien whose leave to remain was cancelled while he was abroad was entitled to return in order to exercise his right of appeal. However, he did not consider that the applicant and the alien were in comparable situations, since citizenship was different in nature from the