Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-001180

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/53575/2024
LP/12991/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

16th May 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BLUNDELL
DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE Ó CEALLAIGH KC

Between

HL
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Ridding, counsel instructed by David Benson Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr Walker, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 9 May 2025

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellant is granted anonymity on account of the fact that she is a victim of trafficking and an asylum seeker. No-one shall publish or reveal any information, including the name or address of the appellant, likely to lead members of the public to identify the appellant.

Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS

Introduction

1. The appellant is a national of Albania born on 16 January 2001. She is an accepted victim of serious sexual abuse and sexual exploitation. She escaped that exploitation but asserts that if returned to Albania she will be killed by those who exploited her and trafficked her.

2. On 24 August 2023 a positive conclusive grounds decision was made recognising the appellant as a victim of modern slavery.

3. On 30 January 2024 the respondent refused her asylum and humanitarian protection claims. She appealed.

4. On 8 January 2025 the appellant’s appeal was heard by First-tier Tribunal Judge Beg sitting remotely at Manchester.

5. Judge Beg dismissed the appeal in a determination dated 8 January 2025. The appellant sought permission to appeal.

6. On 10 March 2025 permission to appeal was granted on all grounds by First-tier Tribunal Judge Mulready.

Grounds of appeal

7. Formally, the four grounds of appeal are as follows:

a. Ground 1: Giving undue weight to and/or making a material error with respect to the appellant’s relationship with her family in Albania;

b. Ground 2: Failure to take into account and/or resolve matters material to the assessment of the best interests of a child;

c. Ground 3: Irrational assessment of a medical report;

d. Ground 4: Misapplication of the principle in paragraph 339K of the Rules.

8. We say that those are formally the four grounds, because while Ground 4 is primarily directed to the alleged failure to take into account the fact that the appellant had already suffered persecution in deciding whether or not she was at risk of future persecution, that is not the only matter addressed under that rubric. Ground 4 also raises issues in respect of the First-tier Tribunal's findings of fact. Although these issues might have more neatly fitted into a separate ground, they are squarely raised.

9. In particular a key point, possibly the key point taken against the appellant in terms of credibility, is that she is “unable to give a reason” why one of her “abusers” took her away from her situation of sexual exploitation [31]. The clear implication in the FTTJ’s reasoning is that it makes no sense why the traffickers would help her leave the situation of trafficking.

10. The appellant’s case however, as set out in her witness statements in considerable detail, is that one of the men who visited her while she was enslaved as a prostitute befriended her over a long period. Upon discovering that she had been forced into prostitution, he reacted with horror and helped her escape. The grounds allege in essence that Judge Beg has misunderstood her case and conflated the appellant’s traffickers and her “clients”.

The hearing

11. Mr Ridding submitted a skeleton argument which arrived during the course of the morning. We are grateful to Mr Walker and Mr Ridding for their assistance.

12. Mr Walker accepted at the outset that there was a material error of law in respect of the assessment of the best interests of the appellant’s British son. We consider that concession to be well made and accept it. As detailed in the grounds the Judge gave no weight at all to the fact of the child’s British citizenship or the fact that he is a qualifying child for the purposes of s117B of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. There was no analysis of the impact of the child of losing the benefit of his entitlements as a British citizen. Nor was there consideration of the respondent’s policy which provides as follows:

“The starting point is that we would not normally expect a qualifying child to leave the UK. It is normally in a child’s best interest for the whole family to remain together, which means if the child is not expected to leave, then the parent or parents or primary carer of the child will also not be expected to leave the UK.”

13. In the circumstances we accept the parties’ agreed position that there is an error of law in respect of the Article 8 ECHR assessment.

14. Although Mr Walker also accepted that there was considerable force in the appellant’s Ground 1, we do not agree. Judge Beg was entitled to conclude that the appellant had given conflicting accounts of her relationship with her family at the point that she left Albania. On the one hand, she stated at [8] of her witness statement that she had been disowned by them before she left. On the other, she gave no indication in her interview that she had been disowned, despite there having been a number of questions which might have been expected to elicit that information. The judge gave very great weight to those inconsistencies. We consider that, although other judges might not necessarily have reached the same conclusions on those issues, she was entitled to give those matters such weight as she considered appropriate.

15. However in our view the critical ground as regards the appellant’s protection claim is Ground 4 as developed above. It is clear to us that the FTTJ misunderstood the appellant’s factual case on a key issue. That this is so appears from the FTTJ’s comments at [5] (”one of the people who abused her, found her and put her into a lorry”) and [30-31] (“one of her abusers helped her to travel to the United Kingdom”).

16. The FTTJ did not accept that a person who had trafficked the appellant would have helped her escape [30-31]. But that was not the appellant’s factual case. This was a matter on which the FTTJ placed critical, apparently decisive weight in finding that the appellant’s account of her reasons for leaving Albania was not credible [31].

17. Mr Walker candidly conceded that this was a clear error that goes to the heart of the FTTJ’s decision in respect of the protection claim. We agree.

18. It follows that the case requires a full rehearing. In those circumstances we agree with the advocates that the appropriate course is to remit it to the First-tier Tribunal with no findings preserved.

Notice of Decision

The decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Beg dated 8 January 2025 did involve the making of a material error of law. That decision is set aside and the matter is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal for a full rehearing with no findings of fact preserved.

Greg Ó Ceallaigh KC

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

13 May 2025