Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-001838

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/02009/2023

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 22nd of October 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE LODATO

Between

HM
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Holmes, counsel instructed by Legal Justice Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms Blackburn, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Phoenix House (Bradford) on 26 September 2025

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellant is granted anonymity.

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. I have decided to maintain the anonymity order originally made in these proceedings by the First-tier Tribunal because the underlying claim involves international protection issues in that the appellant claims to fear persecution or serious harm on return to their country of origin. In reaching this decision, I am mindful of the fundamental principle of open justice, but I am satisfied, taking the appellant’s case at its highest for these purposes, that the potential grave risks outweigh the rights of the public to know of his identity.
2. The appellant appeals with permission against the decision, dated 19 February 2025, of a judge of the First-tier Tribunal (‘the judge’) to dismiss the appeal on international protection and human rights grounds.
Background
3. The appellant’s primary case in support of his protection claim was that he is an Iranian national and that the conclusion reached in a previous 2017 determination, that he was in fact from the Iraqi Kurdish Region, ought to be displaced on the strength of the evidence presented to the judge in February 2025. It was further argued that even if he were from Iraq, he could not access the civil documentation he would need to avoid conditions which would breach his Article 3 human rights.
Appeal to the First-tier Tribunal
4. For the purposes of the present proceedings, the following key matters emerge from the decision:
i. The judge noted that the appellant’s supporting witness, Mr A, had not attended the hearing because he was abroad. The appellant did not know where he had gone or when he would return. The appellant’s representative did not seek an adjournment of the hearing. [5]

ii. The principle controversial issues were agreed to be:

a) Is the Appellant an Iranian National?
b) Is the Appellant an Iraqi National?
c) If the Appellant is an Iraqi National, does he have possession of his CSID card or, alternatively, can he have it sent to him in the UK , or alternatively, can he be met with it at the airport on return to the IKR by direct flight?

iii. Between [10] and [19], the judge reached his findings of fact about the primary nationality questions which fell to be decided. He began by noting that he had had regard to all of the documents relied upon by the parties even if not expressly referred to. He then turned to the starting point of the overwhelmingly adverse findings which had been reached in the 2017 previous determination. He pointed to the evidence which strongly indicated that the appellant hailed from Sulaymaniyah in the IKR, including his own previous assertions that he was Iraqi. The following overall conclusion was reached, at [19]:

I, therefore, conclude that there is no new evidence and no change of country information that permits me to depart from Judge Caswell’s Finding that the Appellant is an Iraqi National.

iv. Between [20] and [21], the judge considered the documentation issue on the basis that the appellant was an Iraqi national. It was decided that the appellant was not a truthful witness, and he was unable to rely on what he had to say about the documents or family support which would be available to him on return to Iraq.
Appeal to the Upper Tribunal
5. The appellant applied for permission to appeal in reliance on the following grounds:
I. The judge’s analysis of the appellant’s credibility was legally flawed.

II. The judge overlooked important and material evidence in the shape of a letter from Mr A who asserted that the appellant was Iranian.
6. In a decision dated 16 July 2025, Upper Tribunal Judge Landes granted permission for both grounds to be argued. The following observations were made in granting permission:
I consider there is force in the point that the bundle did contain some evidence which was not before the previous judge about the appellant’s claimed Iranian nationality, namely the letter from Mr A. It was arguably wrong therefore for the First-Tier Tribunal Judge to say that there was no new evidence. Whilst I am sceptical whether this would have made any difference to the judge’s conclusions even if he had considered such evidence, I do not consider I can say at this stage that if there was an error, it could not even arguably have been material.

I do not restrict the grounds, although I observe that the judge having comprehensively disbelieved the appellant it is difficult to see why he could not come to a conclusion that the appellant could be met at the airport with his CSID (and it is not obvious that male family members would have to bring it).
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 inadequacy 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 are 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 whole without being hypercritical. Appellate 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 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. Dealing first with ground one, Mr Holmes did not make any oral submissions touching on this argument electing instead to rely on what was pleaded in the grounds and focussing on ground two. I have no hesitation in concluding that the judge was more than entitled in law to take the approach he did to the question of whether the appellant would be able to access the documentation he would need to travel within Iraq and function in civil society. The country guidance is clear that with a CSID or INID card an appellant will be at risk of Article 3 conditions but the inability to access these essential documents remains a matter to be proved by the appellant. It is unsurprising that the judge found himself unable to rely on the narrative account proffered by the appellant given the emphatic rejection of his overall credibility in claiming to be from an entirely different country. Not only that, but the judge also pointed to compelling evidence that tended to indicate that he had access to relatives in Sulaymaniyah whom the appellant had not shown would be unavailable to him in the documentation process. The judge was entitled to look to this evidence in reaching the conclusions he did on this issue. When the grounds of appeal posit the argument that the judge ought to have considered the alternative that he had no family available to him, it must be kept in mind that there was precisely no cogent evidence to make good this counter-factual proposition because this scenario was only supported by the appellant’s narrative evidence which had been roundly rejected. It cannot be sensibly suggested that the judge lost sight of the lower standard of proof. Accordingly, I find that there is no error of law in how the dealt with the documentation issue.
10. Turning to the second ground which was the focus of the parties’ submissions at the hearing, it is important to reflect on what was actually asserted by Mr A in his letter of 15 January 2019. He said this:
My Name […], I am Iranian national from Mariwan — sling village.

I know [HM] from the childhood and we are relative, my uncle […] is married [HM]’s aunt name […] in the village Mirwari of Mariwan town-IRAN. I am ready under any circumstances to give my wittiness statement that [HM] is Iranian national.

On 01/01/2019 I met him in YPG coffee shop in Sheffield.
11. The letter does not include a statement of truth but does include a photograph of his identification card. Ms Blackburn recognised during the hearing that it would have been preferable if the judge had assessed this letter in the context of his findings of fact about the nationality issues which fell to be decided. I agree that the reasoning would have been fuller if he had done so and I can well see the tension Mr Holmes relied upon in the judge’s observation that there was “no new evidence” which could justify a departure from the conclusions reached in the 2017 decision. However, context is important in considering whether the overall decision supports the notion that this letter was left out of account. The judge was plainly aware of Mr A’s role in the proceedings because he referred to his absence as a witness as a preliminary matter. The judge also began his fact-finding assessment by noting that he had considered all of the evidence even if not expressly referred to. On that footing, reading the decision fairly, and not hypercritically, I do not conclude that the judge overlooked or disregarded Mr A’s letter. However, the reasoning would have been strengthened by some analysis of this letter, even if that analysis might have been briefly expressed. I am not persuaded that the absence of express consideration of this letter vitiates the lawfulness of the decision. The judge explained why he found against appellant on these factual questions, and he was not required in law to say more than he did to further strengthen his decision by analysing a letter which he was plainly aware of when paragraph [5] of the decision is considered.
12. Even if I am wrong about whether the omission to assess the letter is an error of law, I am entirely satisfied that any such error is manifestly immaterial. Mr Holmes helpfully directed me to the recent reiteration of the applicable test in ASO (Iraq) v SSHD [2023] EWCA Civ 1282, where Elisabeth Laing LJ, at [43], adopted the following formulation from previous authority:
[…] whether 'it is clear on the materials before [the F-tT] any rational tribunal must have come to the same conclusion'. If that is clear, then any error of law would be immaterial, and the appeal should fail.
13. I find that it is clear that any rational tribunal would have come to very same conclusion even if Mr A’s letter had been expressly assessed in the fact-finding analysis. It is inconceivable that any more than minimal weight could have been attached to the skeletal assertions made in a letter unsupported by a statement of truth from an individual who did not attend the hearing to have his account tested by the hearing process. The appellant did not seek an adjournment to make efforts to secure the attendance of this witness. I accept Mr Holmes’s submission that I do not have full insight into the appellant’s reasons for not instructing his representatives to seek an adjournment, but it cannot be said that Mr A was regarded to be of such importance as a witness that his absence was thought to be a sound reason to take steps to arrange for his tested oral evidence to weigh in any fact-finding process. I am inclined to agree with Ms Blackburn’s submission that when the bare assertions in Mr A’s letter are seen against the overwhelming evidence underpinning the previous determination which was lawfully treated as a starting point on the nationality questions, it is abundantly clear that any rational tribunal would have come to precisely the same conclusion even if the modest analytical gap had been filled.
14. I conclude that the decision did not involve an error of law and even if it did, it is not material to the overall outcome.
Notice of Decision
The decision of the judge did not involve a material error of law, and I dismiss the appeal. The decision of the judge will stand undisturbed.

Paul Lodato

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

9 October 2025