Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-001250

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/52655/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

27th May 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE LODATO

Between

MD WAHIDUR RAHMAN
(NO ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr McVeety, Senior Presenting Officer
For the Respondent: Mr Islam, Lawmatic Solicitors

Heard at Phoenix House (Bradford) on 16 May 2025

DECISION AND REASONS
Introduction
1. The Secretary of State appeals with permission against the decision, dated 20 December 2024, of First-tier Tribunal Judge Greer (‘the judge’), to allow the appeal on international protection grounds.
2. To avoid confusion, and for the remainder of this decision, I will refer to the appellant in these appellate proceedings, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, as the respondent, and the respondent in the Upper Tribunal, Mr Rahman, as the appellant, as they were before the First-tier Tribunal.

Background
3. The broad procedural background and immigration history is not in dispute between the parties. In short, the appellant claims to be at risk of persecution on return to Bangladesh on account of false and politically motivated criminal charges which have been laid against him.
Appeal to the First-tier Tribunal
4. The appellant appealed against the refusal of the claim. The appeal was heard by the judge on 18 December 2024 before allowing the appeal in a decision promulgated on 20 December 2024. For the purposes of the present proceedings, the following key matters emerge from the decision:
• The judge noted that the Awami League government had recently been toppled. However, the single agreed issue to be determined in the appeal remained the question of whether the appellant could show that he was “wanted by the Bangladeshi state on trumped up charges levelled at him due to his historical opposition to the previous regime”. The appellant recognised that this was the only basis on which his protection appeal could succeed because his participation in sur place political activity in the UK no longer placed him at risk. [4-5]
• It was decided that the applicable standard of proof for the purposes of resolving the single factual issue was the balance of probabilities in accordance with the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 statutory scheme. In this introductory part of the findings section of the decision, the judge noted that he would be considering all of the evidence in the round. [6]
• Given the centrality of the of the following passage for the purposes of the error of law hearing, I set out in full the judge’s findings (at [7]-[8]) on the appellant’s credibility as a witness:
As a general observation, I found the Appellant to be an unimpressive witness in his evidence before the Tribunal. He plainly found the experience of giving evidence before the Tribunal to be a difficult one. He found it impossible to answer any of the questions put to him in a direct fashion and frequently spoke at length about topics only loosely related to the question asked. On [sic] particular example of his evasiveness was when he was asked a series of questions about a demonstration said to have taken place on the Monday before Friday 26th January 2024. Although this was not a contentious point, the Appellant refused to accept Mr Barrow’s suggestion that 22nd January 2024 fell on a Monday. When I pointed out to him that I had a calendar in front of me which confirmed Mr Barrow’s contention that 22nd January 2024 was a Monday, he told the Tribunal that he could not understand why the Tribunal was telling him this and he refused to accept the premise of Mr Barrow’s question. Another example of the Appellant simply refusing to answer questions arose when the Appellant was asked a series of questions about whether he ever received surgery in Bangladesh. The Appellant was not desirous of assisting the Tribunal in understanding his case.
I have considered what weight to attach to the Appellant’s evasiveness when considering the reliability of his evidence. I have kept in mind the guidance of the higher courts as to the hazards of attaching a great deal of weight to a witness’ demeanour (see, for example, SS (Sri Lanka), R (On the Application Of) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 1391) and I have kept in mind the unchallenged evidence before the Tribunal that the Appellant suffers from medication. Having done so, I find that the Appellant’s evasiveness when answering questions only weighs against him to a very limited extent.
[Underlining added]
• It was further held against the appellant’s general credibility that he had not claimed asylum at the first opportunity and had not been truthful in his application for permission to enter the UK. His explanation for these matters was found to be inconsistent with his broader factual narrative. However, these adverse factors were tempered by him making his claim before his visa expired. [9]
• Having assessed these adverse matters, the judge pointed to factor which supported the appellant’s overall reliability as a witness. [10]
• It was firstly noted that the underlying factual claim was supported by a wealth of supporting documents including ostensibly official records which touched directly on the claimed criminal proceedings in Bangladesh. It was observed that this was considered in the round with the other evidence. [11]
• The judge expressly referred to the CPIN on Bangladeshi documentation and the ease with which unreliable documentation can be obtained. He therefore approached the supporting documents with scepticism and again referred to taking this factor into account in the round. [12]
• The proposition that the respondent should have taken steps to verify the documents was emphatically rejected and, instead, the structured approach of Tanveer Ahmed [2002] Imm AR 318 was to be taken. [13]
• The judge engaged with the respondent’s arguments as to why the documents could not be trusted. An obvious date error in a translation of the seizure list was not found to be sinister or indicative of falsity. It undermined the reliability of the document but only to a limited degree. A further date issue was canvassed in relation to the interval of exactly 3 years between the first information report and the arrest order. Neither the coincidence of the same date, 3 years apart, nor the delay in and of itself, were in any way implausible when measured against the objective country information about entrenched delays in the Bangladeshi legal system. Finally, the notion that it was improbable that the appellant would have possession of a charge sheet was roundly rejected. [14-16]
• The judge said this in conclusion about the supporting documents, at [17]:
The Appellant has provided a consistent, plausible explanation as to the origins of these documents and they fit well with his own narrative of what has happened. Having rejected the criticisms of the Respondent, and kept in mind the Respondent’s concerns about the reliability of documents originating from Bangladesh more generally, I find that the documents are entitled to some weight to be taken in the round with the evidence before the Tribunal.
[Underlining added]
• The judge pointed to a series of answers given by the appellant in his substantive interview which revealed a level of detail about his political views and how this cohered with the broad thrust of his narrative case. It was further found that his account of being politically targeted by the former regime for his activities with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party chimed with the respondent’s CPIN on political parties and affiliations. [18]
• The judge reached his overall conclusion in the following terms, at [20]:
I have stood back and considered all of the evidence in the round. On the one hand, the Appellant’s general credibility as a witness is undermined by operation of law and he was an evasive witness who actively avoided answering questions at the hearing before me. I attach weight to these considerations. On the other hand, his evidence in Home Office Interview was detailed, consistent and plausible and his claims were supported by documentary evidence which is entitled to weight. I attach weight to these considerations. This is undoubtedly a finely balanced case given the Appellant’s historical dishonesty in his dealings with the Respondent and his evasiveness with the Tribunal. However, in my judgment, the matters weighing in the Appellant’s favour outweigh those weighing against him. I find that it is most likely that the Appellant was involved with the Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Chatradal, that his activism attracted the adverse attention of his political opponents and that he is facing trumped up charges which are being actively pursued by the state. This being the case, his appeal succeeds.
Appeal to the Upper Tribunal
5. The respondent applied for permission to appeal in reliance on a single ground of challenge, namely, that the judge failed to provide lawfully adequate reasons for his overall conclusions which led to the appeal being allowed.
6. In a decision dated 17 March 2025, First-tier Tribunal Judge Veloso granted permission for the ground of appeal to be argued.
7. At the error of law hearing, I heard oral submissions from both parties. I address any submissions of significance in the discussion section below.
Discussion
8. The touchstone for considering adequacy of reasoning as an error of law remains R (Iran) & Others v SSHD [2005] EWCA Civ 982. At [13]-[14] of the judgment of Brook LJ, it was emphasised that reasons must be sufficiently detailed to show the principles on which a decision was made and why the ultimate decision was reached. Reasons need not be elaborate nor is it necessary to address each and every matter which might have had a bearing on the overall decision if those which were material to the reasoning have been articulated. In DPP Law Ltd v Paul Greenberg [2021] EWCA Civ 672, the Court of Appeal, in the context of employment proceedings, considered adequacy of reasoning as an error of law. Popplewell LJ, stressed, at [57], the need to consider judicial reasons fairly and as a whole without being hypercritical. Restraint is required to read reasons benevolently. “Simple, clear and concise” reasoning was to be encouraged to enable to parties to broadly understand why they had won or lost. Further, it should not be assumed that an element of the evidence which was not expressly discussed was thereby left out of account. While these observations were made in the context of employment proceedings, they are of relevance in the immigration and asylum sphere because this is also a jurisdiction in which decisions are made by expert tribunals attenuated by the need to give appeals anxious scrutiny.
9. Tanveer Ahmed v SSHD [2002] Imm AR 318 established the following principles in relation to the judicial assessment of documentary evidence:
i. The appellant bears the burden of demonstrating that a document should be relied upon by the tribunal.
ii. In reaching findings on the reliability of documentary evidence, the tribunal must consider the document in the context of all the evidence.
iii. It is not necessary to conclude that a document is a forgery before finding it to be unreliable.
10. As summarised above, the judge directed himself to SS (Sri Lanka) in his assessment of the manner in which the appellant gave his oral evidence. It is well-established that of all the tools in the judicial toolbox used for assessing credibility, the demeanour of a witness is perhaps the most unreliable and prone to error. The dangers which might flow from such a flawed analytical approach were emphasised, within the immigration and asylum context, by Leggatt LJ at paragraphs [36]-[40] of SS (Sri Lanka). The principled position was summarised at [41]:
No doubt it is impossible, and perhaps undesirable, to ignore altogether the impression created by the demeanour of a witness giving evidence. But to attach any significant weight to such impressions in assessing credibility risks making judgments which at best have no rational basis and at worst reflect conscious or unconscious biases and prejudices. One of the most important qualities expected of a judge is that they will strive to avoid being influenced by personal biases and prejudices in their decision-making. That requires eschewing judgments based on the appearance of a witness or on their tone, manner or other aspects of their behaviour in answering questions. Rather than attempting to assess whether testimony is truthful from the manner in which it is given, the only objective and reliable approach is to focus on the content of the testimony and to consider whether it is consistent with other evidence (including evidence of what the witness has said on other occasions) and with known or probable facts.
11. In the course of his submissions, Mr McVeety helpfully directed me to a recent decision of the Court of Appeal in QY (Vietnam) v SSHD [2025] EWCA Civ 607. He argued that this appeal also involved an adequacy of reasons challenge and that the analysis, at [58]-[60] of the judgment of Dingemans LJ, resonated with the issue to be decided in the present proceedings. In considering this analysis, it is also worth looking to what Dingemans LJ said immediately before this part of his rationale for deciding the appeal. He said this at [57]-[60]:
In my judgment the Upper Tribunal judge was right to set aside the findings of the FTT judge. The FTT judge had rightly borne in mind what is referred to as the lower standard of proof in asylum and protection claims, see paragraphs 53 and 54 above, in rejecting criticisms made of parts of the appellant's evidence in the Secretary of State's decision letter. The FTT judge had then considered factors that damage the appellant's credibility and had found that the failure to adduce evidence of the appellant's attempts to get the 2010 recruitment order and the failure to adduce evidence from family members was damaging to his credibility. […]
The FTT judge then stated that these matters "raise serious concerns about the appellant's credibility". The FTT judge then stated that the evidence as a whole had been considered and found a good level of internal consistency, and did not find the account implausible. That does, as the Upper Tribunal judge correctly recorded, beg the question of what the FTT judge has taken into account in finding that the accounts were plausible, notwithstanding that they were dependent on the credibility of the appellant, about which as the FTT judge had found, there were serious concerns.
In the course of submissions it was accepted that there was some infelicity of phraseology in the wording of the FTT decision, and there was a suggestion that the FTT judge might not have intended to say that there were "serious concerns" about the appellant's credibility, in part because that phrase followed the FTT judge's statement that there was little weight to be attached to the appellant's failure to claim asylum sooner, whether in the UK or another country. The difficulty for the appellant is that these were the words used by the FTT judge.
The fact that there is, for good reason, a lower standard of proof in asylum and protection claims, does not obviate the necessity to explain how "serious concerns" about the appellant's credibility have disappeared, so that explanations, which might on their own have been plausible, remain plausible. In my judgment, the Secretary of State, as the losing party, was entitled to reasons "in sufficient detail to show" what had led to the decision, see Fage at paragraph 115. In this case the Secretary of State was entitled to know why, notwithstanding the serious concerns about credibility raised by the absence of evidence of requests for the 2010 recruitment order and the absence of evidence from family members, the appellant's account, which depended only on the appellant's evidence, was plausible.
[Underling added]
12. The first point to note about this judgment is that it is not a reported decision and does not appear to decide a point of principle as opposed to applying a well-recognised legal test to the facts of the proceedings before it. The second point is that the decision was plainly a finely-balanced one in that Dingemans LJ noted that he had “read, and re-read, the decision of the FTT judge to consider whether the Upper Tribunal was right to set aside the decision or was simply disagreeing with a decision he would not have made” ([56]). The finely balanced nature of the decision was also underscored by the dissenting judgment of Holroyd LJ. At [69] and [71-[72] of his judgment, he noted that the FTT decision could have been better expressed and that the decision of the Upper Tribunal in allowing the reasons challenge was itself in error as hinging on the kind of “narrow textual analysis” which the authorities have deprecated.
13. The second point is that there is good reason to distinguish QY (Vietnam) from the present proceedings. The plausibility and credibility concerns which were expressed by the FTT judge in QY (Vietnam) came against the backdrop of that appellant’s failure to provide readily available supporting material. This can be seen from the underlined sections I have emphasised in the passage copied above. This feature of the appeal was further explored at paragraphs [33]-[34]. This is demonstrably distinct from the matter I must decide where the judge plainly found supporting evidence had been provided which was broadly reliable and supportive of the broad thrust of the appellant’s core narrative claim about the events which had preceded his departure from Bangladesh.
14. For these reasons, QY (Vietnam) simply cannot bear the weight which was placed on it to support the proposition that I should likewise conclude that the FTT judge in this matter had inadequately reasoned his decision.
15. Mr McVeety did not solely rely on QY (Vietnam) in support of his case. He strongly argued that the decision was legally flawed for three central reasons:
1) the respondent could not sensibly understand how the judge found that the appellant’s evasive evidence only weighed against him to a “very limited extent” (at [8]) when compared to findings elsewhere in the decision which tended to suggest that greater weight was attached to this damaging feature, and the “very limited extent” observation was itself partly based on the incomprehensible remark that the ”appellant suffers from medication”;
2) the judge did not absorb his adverse credibility findings into the assessment of the supporting documents and therefore failed to consider the evidence in the round;
3) in finding that the appellant had provided detailed answers to a series of questions in his substantive interview, the judge had not engaged with the points taken against his credibility in the reasons for refusal letter.
I will deal with each point in turn.
16. The first point is essentially that the reasons are not coherent. The observation at [8], in which the judge noted that he attached very little weight to the appellant’s evasiveness during his oral evidence is difficult to reconcile with other parts of the decision where he appeared to attach greater weight to this feature of the evidence. The curious reference to suffering from medication only underscored this incoherence. I agree that this part of the decision does not sit well with the rest of the decision where the judge repeatedly refers to the dim view he had taken of the appellant’s apparently wilful disinclination to assist the tribunal by fully answering the questions asked of him. It is also clear that the judge could not have meant to say that the appellant suffered from medication because this simply makes no sense. However, viewing this paragraph within its proper context, it is clear to me that this paragraph was simply not drafted with the requisite care. However, such drafting errors are an unsafe platform on which to construct any conclusion that the judge was not tolerably clear about why he allowed the appeal, and that he adequately considered the part played by the appellant’s evasiveness in giving oral evidence.
17. That the judge took seriously the appellant’s conduct during his oral evidence is evident from what was said both before and after paragraph [8]. In setting out, in some detail at [7], the way in which the appellant “was not desirous of assisting the tribunal in understanding his case”, the judge cannot be fairly said to have glossed over this part of the evidence he heard. After he considered all of the various parts of the overall evidence including the supporting documents, country background information and the appellant’s detailed account given during the substantive interview, the judge noted that he attached weight to his evasiveness in actively avoiding answering questions and that the case was finely balanced due in part to his evasiveness. This is not the language of a judge going through the motions of blithely discussing an assessment of the evidence in the round but resonates far more strongly with a judge attempting to balance features of the evidence which weighed for and against the appellant’s narrative claim.
18. There is greater force to the second broad complaint that the judge did not draw in the conclusions he had reached about the appellant’s unhelpful oral evidence when considering if he had established the reliability of the documents he had provided in support of his appeal. It is fair to say that the judge did not expressly absorb the serious concerns he had expressed about the appellant’s oral evidence when considering the supporting documents.
19. However, reading the decision with due fairness and benevolence, it appears to me that this is what the judge meant when he began his assessment of the documents at [11] by noting that he assessed them in the round with the other evidence. This part of the decision immediately followed the part which dealt with the appellant’s unhelpful and evasive oral evidence. It is tolerably clear that these factors were well in mind when the judge assessed the supporting documents. It is equally clear that the judge anxiously scrutinised both the documents relied upon and the arguments which were levelled against their reliability by the respondent. The judge was entitled in law to reach the conclusions he did about this important corroborative evidence.
20. I can address the third broad theme more succinctly. In short, to provide adequate reasons for allowing the appeal, the judge was not required to engage in a line-by-line analysis of the reasons for refusal letter, but to explain why he found in the appellant’s favour on the single principal controversial issue between the parties. The respondent can be in no reasonable doubt about why the appeal was decided in the way it was. The judge fully explained why he reached the conclusion that the claimed events which were said to have unfolded in Bangladesh had indeed happened on the balance of probabilities. The respondent knows precisely why she lost this appeal and while she may disagree with the outcome in a finely balanced case, such a disagreement cannot underpin a finding that the decision involved an error of law.
21. There is a danger of what has been referred to as “island-hopping” in assessing the adequacy of a judge’s reasons. I must resist the temptation to do so by hopping to the island of paragraph [8]. The landmass reflected in the rest of the decision reveals that appropriate and meaningful weight was attached to the way in which the appellant gave his evidence during the hearing. Ultimately, the lawful conclusion was reached that, despite his evasive testimony, the appellant’s core narrative evidence was broadly credible to the applicable standard of proof when seen against the appellant’s previous detailed accounts, the reliable supporting documents and the country background information.
Notice of Decision
The decision of Judge Greer did not involve an error of law. I therefore dismiss this appeal.

P Lodato

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

23 May 2025