Unemployed Oxford graduate, 41, SUES his parents to get a maintenance grant for life

An unemployed Oxford graduate is taking his parents to court in an effort to force them to provide him with a lifelong maintenance grant.  

Faiz Siddiqui, 41, claims he is entirely dependent on his wealthy parents, who are based in Dubai, and is entitled to claim maintenance from them as a ‘vulnerable’ grown-up child due to his health issues.

Mr Siddiqui, who worked for a series of law firms after graduating from university, argues that denying him the money would be in violation of his human rights. 

The case come just three years after Mr Siddiqui, who tried to sue Oxford University over his failure to get a first-class degree, had his £1million compensation thrown out by the High Court.

The Oxford graduate, who has been unemployed since 2011, currently lives rent-free at a £1million flat that is owned by his mother Rakshanda, 69, and father Javed, 71, near Hyde Park in central London. 

 Faiz Siddiqui (pictured in 2017), 41, claims he is entirely dependent on his wealthy parents and is suing them in an effort to receive a maintenance grant for life

The wealthy parents have been providing their son with more than £400-a-week and also help him with his bills. 

However the parents now want to reduce their funding after a row with their son who they claim is ‘difficult, demanding and pertinacious’.

Mr Siddiqui’s case has now been sent to the Court of Appeal after it was rejected by a family court judge last year. 

The family’s lawyer, Justin Warshaw QC, told The Sun: ‘These long-suffering parents have their own view of what is suitable provision for their ”difficult, demanding and pertinacious” son.’  

The unique case come after Mr Siddiqui tried to sue his former university for ‘appallingly bad’ teaching that cost him a top degree and a lucrative legal career.

The Oxford graduate had claimed ‘boring’ tuition and staff being on extended sabbatical leave had meant he only received a 2:1 instead of the first-class degree he had wanted.

He maintained this cost him a place on a law course at a top US Ivy League university, such as Yale or Harvard, and denied him the high-flying legal career he had coveted.

Mr Siddiqui and his barrister Roger Mallalieu had valued his loss of earnings claim against the Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford, at £1million. 

However in 2018 Mr Siddiqui’s claim was thrown out of court and he was told by a High Court judge the tuition he received at Brasenose College was of a ‘perfectly adequate standard’. 

Mr Justice Foskett ruled Mr Siddiqui’s ‘inadequate preparation’ and ‘lack of academic discipline’ towards his degree were the reasons he under performed in his June 2000 exams. 

He added a ‘severe episode of hay fever’ may also have contributed to Mr Siddiqui’s failure to get the grade he wanted. 

In 2018, Mr Siddiqui, who studied at Brasenose College (pictured), Oxford, tried to sue his former university 

The judge also rejected claims Mr Siddiqui’s personal tutor at Brasenose had failed to alert exam authorities that he was suffering from ‘insomnia, depression and anxiety’ when he sat a paper.  

While expressing ‘sympathy and understanding’ for Mr Siddiqui’s intermittent bouts of severe depression, Mr Justice Foskett said there was no evidence he was suffering from mental health problems when he took his final exams.

Meanwhile Oxford University accepted there were fewer teaching staff during the autumn term in 1999 but denied teaching was ‘inadequate’. 

Following the landmark trial, Mr Justice Foskett said: ‘Whilst it cannot be said that some aspect of a person’s education – inadequately delivered – can never be the cause of that person’s failure to achieve some otherwise attainable objective, the hurdles in establishing a claim for compensation based upon that inadequate delivery are great and often insurmountable.

‘In this case, I have not been satisfied that the delivery of one particular feature of the claimant’s undergraduate degree course was inadequate or, in any event, that it had the consequences claimed for it.’

He added: ‘That said, in the present climate, some 17 years on from the material events in this case, when students are incurring substantial debts to pursue their university education, the quality of the education delivered will undoubtedly come under even greater scrutiny than it did in the past.

‘There may be some rare cases where some claim for compensation for the inadequacy of the tuition provided may succeed, but it is hardly the ideal way of achieving redress.’