Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-001841

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/52680/2024
LP/11611/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 5 September 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE LODATO

Between

AD
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Unrepresented
For the Respondent: Mr McVeety, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Manchester Civil Justice Centre on 12 August 2025

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellant and/or any member of his family, 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 and/or any member of his family. 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 I have decided to maintain the anonymity order originally made in these proceedings by the First-tier Tribunal because the underlying claim involves international protection issues in that the appellant claims to fear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 Iraq. 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 risks outweigh the rights of the public to know of their identities.

2. The appellant is a national of Iraq, born on 9 February 1986. This appeal arises from the decision of the First-tier Tribunal, promulgated on 10 March 2025, which dismissed the appellant’s appeal on asylum, humanitarian protection, and human rights grounds.

Appeal to the First-tier Tribunal

3. The First-tier Tribunal judge dismissed the appeal on all grounds. She found the appellant not to be a credible witness, concluding that his account was internally inconsistent and unsupported by reliable evidence. The judge accepted the respondent’s case that the appellant’s fears were speculative and did not amount to persecution for a Refugee Convention reason.

4. The judge rejected the appellant’s claims of risk arising from his tribal affiliation and perceived sexual orientation, finding that the mistreatment he described amounted to passive aggression and did not reach the threshold for persecution. The judge further concluded that the appellant’s father’s high-ranking political history did not place him at risk and that he could, in any event, turn to the Iraqi authorities for sufficient state protection and that internal relocation within Iraq was reasonable.

5. The appellant’s claim under Article 8 ECHR was dismissed on the basis that he had not advanced such a claim, and his family could reasonably be expected to return to Iraq.

Appeal to the Upper Tribunal

6. The grounds of appeal are extensive and discursive. They allege multiple errors in the decision. The grounds are not particularised under separate heads of legal challenge. However, it must be kept in mind that the appellant is not represented and has plainly done his best explain why he considers the decision to be legally flawed. From my reading of the grounds, the following broad challenges to the decision emerge:

i. The judge did not anxiously scrutinise his narrative account because of tensions in her analysis of the time he spent in Middle Eastern countries outside of Iraq.

ii. The judge wrongly rejected the appellant’s case on grounds of imputed sexuality because she relied on him being married with children.

iii. The adverse credibility findings were inadequately reasoned including matters going to the freezing of the appellant’s father’s assets, the delay in the appellant claiming asylum in the UK and the failure to provide supporting evidence of his studies in the UK.

iv. The judge failed to properly assess the evidence which supported the existence of risk based on tribal hostility.

v. The judge failed to consider whether there would be very significant obstacles to integration.

7. In a decision dated 23 April 2025, a judge of the First-tier Tribunal granted permission for all grounds to be argued. The following observations were made in granting permission:

The reasons for seeking leave are lengthy and detailed. They have some flavour of being arguable to them hence I will grant permission on all matters raised for the reasons given by the appellant.

8. 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

9. Before considering the merits of the appeal, it is important to reiterate the nature of the task which must be confronted by a judge considering whether to grant permission to appeal. Mr McVeety directed me to MR (permission to appeal: Tribunal's approach) Brazil [2015] UKUT 00029 (IAC). Here, a Presidential panel provided the following guidance:

When granting permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal, it is unsatisfactory merely to state that the applicant's grounds are arguable.

The requirement, emphasised in Nixon (permission to appeal: grounds) [2014] UKUT 368 (IAC), to engage with each and every ground of application, need not involve anything of an unduly elaborate, burdensome or analytical nature. The reasons for granting or refusing permission to appeal, in whole or part, in any given case will almost invariably be capable of being expressed in a concise and focused manner.

10. The grant of permission for this matter to proceed to a full error of law hearing did not meet this minimum standard. In granting permission on the strength of the grounds having the “flavour” of being arguable is not a reasoned judicial explanation of why the grounds of appeal had any prospect of succeeding, much less a realistic prospect such that the grounds could be properly meet the threshold of arguability. If it cannot be articulated why grounds of appeal are arguable, it is perhaps because they are not. The grant of permission to appeal is not to be taken lightly, it sets in motion a process which will involve the usage of finite and valuable public funds in arranging for an error of law hearing to take place. This should only happen where a judge has provided a reasoned basis for the appeal to proceed. All that being said, I was not persuaded by Mr McVeety’s argument that the appropriate procedural response to a flawed grant of permission is to treat the grant of permission as defective such that permission has not been granted. Instead, it is plain to me that the permission to appeal was granted. The Upper Tribunal has not been assisted by a rationale as to why that decision was taken, but it remains clear that the appellant has overcome the permission hurdle. He should not be penalised because of a lack of reasoning in the decision to grant permission. I approach his appeal on the footing that he has permission to argue all of the points made in his original grounds.

11. I turn now to the grounds of appeal as I understand them.

12. There is no substance to the criticism of the judge’s assessment of the appellant’s residential background. She set this out in some detail at [14] of her decision and was plainly mindful of the relevant chronology. In any event, this element of the appellant’s narrative was of only limited value given the substantive issues which fell to be determined. The judge manifestly considered the central dispute between the parties about what the appellant would face on return to Iraq. She was not distracted or diverted by the evidence which went to the extensive periods of time the appellant spent living outside of Iraq.

13. The suggestion that the judge adopted a legally flawed approach to her assessment of the centrepiece of the appellant’s claim is misconceived. In pointing to the appellant’s marriage and family life with his children, the judge was not suggesting that the appellant’s case could not succeed in principle on the basis of his imputed sexuality which might place him within a particular social group. Instead, the point was directed to whether the appellant would be perceived in the way he feared. This was an essential component in any consideration of whether he had established that he had a characteristic which placed him within the Refugee Convention reason of being a member of a particular social group. Section 33(4) of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 legal scheme makes it clear that such a characteristic now falls to be assessed based on how the relevant society perceives the group in question. This observation was plainly directed to how a married man with children might be perceived by society at large and whether the appellant could establish that he had such a characteristic. In any event, the judge also rejected this part of his protection claim because there was nothing to suggest that he would be at risk of persecution even if he were believed to be a homosexual man due to his mannerisms and behaviour. In reaching this conclusion, the judge was entitled to look to the appellant’s evidence of how such hostility had taken shape in the past where the highest any adverse treatment reached was occasional jostling in public places and disapproving looks. The judge was lawfully entitled to find that there was not a well-founded fear or risk of persecution on return.

14. The appellant’s contention that the judge did not adequately assess the danger arising out of tribal friction does not establish an error of law. There was precious little to support the speculative assertion that he would be at risk of persecution on account of his tribal affiliations or his father’s past and high-ranking political roles. It is difficult to see how any other conclusion might have been reached on the sparse evidence which was relied upon.

15. There is no substance to the argument that the judge has inadequately reasoned the adverse credibility findings she held against the appellant. From a fair reading of the detailed and comprehensive decision, there can be no doubt about why the judge reached the conclusions she did. She plainly understood the nature of the assets freeze which had been implemented against the appellant’s father (see [18] of the decision). The judge was more than entitled to hold it against the appellant that he did not pursue his asylum claim until a lawful basis of stay in the UK started to unravel. It was open to the judge to have her doubts about why the appellant had taken quite as long as he did to seek protection if he had been in danger from the moment he arrived in the UK, as he had claimed.

16. The complaint about the judge’s handling of the issue of the existence of very significant obstacles does not engage with the basis on which this element was not addressed in substance. The judge made it clear that this point was not pursued before her. It is therefore hardly surprising that it was dealt with summarily.

17. The remainder of the challenges in the grounds of appeal and skeleton argument are no more than disagreements with the judge’s factual findings. These points do not amount to errors of law.

Notice of Decision

The decision did not involve errors of law. I dismiss the appeal against the judge’s decision which stands undisturbed.

P Lodato

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

22 August 2025