Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-002515

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/53388/2023 PA/01114/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 8th December 2025

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE COTTON

Between

CN
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE
FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms E Sanders, counsel instructed by Sriharans Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms S Lecointe, senior Home Office presenting officer

Heard at Field House on 6 October 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

1. The appellant, a citizen of Vietnam, claimed asylum on 29 October 2015. The respondent refused the application on 1 June 2023 and the appellant appealed to the First-tier Tribunal where the judge dismissed the appeal in a determination dated 20 March 2025. It is that decision that the appellant now appeals.

In the First-tier Tribunal

2. The judge found that there were a number of factors that undermined the appellant’s credibility. The judge agreed with the decision of the NRM Single Competent Authority that the appellant was a victim of trafficking in France.

3. The judge found that the appellant had not proved that she had been trafficked prior to being in France, but that if that was wrong, she had been trafficked from Laos and not Vietnam. The judge found that the appellant owed some form of debt to traffickers, but that they were not from Vietnam and they did not know her true identity. The appellant does not have, found the judge, the profile of someone who is likely to be re-trafficked.

4. The judge went on to dismiss the appeal on asylum grounds, and under art 2, 3 and 8 of the ECHR.

In the Upper Tribunal

5. The appellant was granted permission to appeal on 10 July 2025. In addition to grounds settled on 3 April 2025 I had available to me further grounds dated 22 May 2025 and oral submissions on behalf of the appellant and respondent. The appellant advances one ground of appeal, namely that the judge failed to make findings on material facts and to give adequate reasons in respect of material circumstances.

6. I remind myself of the need to respect the FtT where the case was heard by a judge with skills and experience in this specialist jurisdiction. My function is to consider any errors of law, not preference of style or approach. I remind myself that a judge is not bound to mention in a determination all of the submissions and evidence that were before them, but that a judge does have to show that they have considered the evidence in the round and give sufficient reasons for the parties to understand the determination.

7. The appellant submits that the judge adopted the NRM decision, but failed to consider the appellant’s claim that she had been a victim of trafficking in Birmingham, which was not considered by the NRM. The Birmingham trafficking was important as it is relevant to the appellant’s credibility and the engagement of s8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc) Act 2004, is relevant to the risk on return as the people holding her in Birmingham were Vietnamese, and is relevant to demonstrating the appellant’s vulnerability to ending up in further situations of exploitation.

8. The appellant pleads that the judge failed to make findings as to whether the appellant would be at risk from traffickers with connections to Vietnam. Further, that the judge erred in adopting the findings of the NRM that the circumstances in which the appellant worked after leaving a cannabis farm in Birmingham did not amount to labour exploitation. The NRM had not considered this and the judge should have addressed the assertion that the appellant’s sense of agency was so diminished that very little physical control was required to keep her compliant with her exploitation.

9. The respondent submitted that the judge had to acknowledge the NRM decision and what had been taken into account by the Single Competent Authority.

10. The respondent came close to saying that the judge should take into account that the NRM had considered evidence that might not be before the judge when considering the NRM decision. I do not take that view. It is for the judge to consider the matter afresh. An NRM decision should not be approached in the same way as a judge might approach a determination of facts by a previous judge in the IAC. A judge ought certainly not blindly to adopt the NRM decision.

11. The respondent submitted to me that the judge had found that the appellant was not a credible witness and that this informs how the judge should approach the claim of risk of re-trafficking.

12. The judge did, says the respondent, consider the risk of re-trafficking against the UK traffickers, and notes that the appellant had no contact with her France traffickers for 10 years.

Analysis and conclusions

13. At [29] the judge acknowledges appellant’s claimed work on a cannabis farm for almost 2 years from 2015 and then again both in domestic servitude and for a cannabis farm from 2019 until her discovery by the police. The judge then goes on to outline various parts of the evidence in the case, addresses the application of s8 on the appellant’s credibility and, at [43] states (emphasis added):

The Appellant has not been found to be a victim of trafficking in the UK. On the basis
of all of the evidence in the round, I find that the decision by the SCA was the correct
one and that the Appellant was a willing participant in economic activity and was paid
for the work which she undertook. She confirmed, in her oral evidence, that she has
had no contact with her traffickers who sexually exploited her in France for over
10 years.

14. The appellant submits that this is the judge adopting the finding of the Single Competent Authority, but going no further than that. Looking at the judge’s determination, and having re-read the SCA decision I do not agree with this interpretation of [43]. In context, that paragraph shows that the judge has taken all the evidence into consideration, agreed with the SCA decision, and further finds that the appellant was a willing (ie freely consenting) participant in the activity on the cannabis farm, was paid for the work, and that she had no contact with her traffickers. It is sufficiently clear that the judge has considered whether the appellant was subject to labour exploitation and found the evidence insufficient to prove this.

15. I am satisfied that the judge has taken the evidence in the round in this case. The judge states as much, and the structure of the decision cross-refers to different parts of the appellant’s case, which indicates that the judge was considering it in the round. The judge has not inappropriately deferred to the NRM decision.

16. The appellant’s position that the judge should not have applied s8 because of the claimed trafficking in Birmingham is alluring. However, to do this the judge would have had not to treat the evidence in the round – just as the claim of trafficking can be relevant to the appellant’s credibility, so is the appellant’s credibility relevant to her claim as a whole. Having taken the evidence in the round, the judge has to start their written analysis somewhere and they did not err in approaching the appellant’s credibility in the way that they did.

17. With regards to the argument that the judge failed to make findings as to whether the appellant would be at risk from traffickers with connections to Vietnam, I note that at [45-49] the judge does address the risk as a trafficked woman. The judge finds that she would be seen as owing some debt to her traffickers, btu that they are not from Vietnam. The judge considers the characteristics of the appellant. The judge had already found at [44] that the people who trafficked the appellant were from Laos, and not Vietnam and did not have connections to Vietnam. In my judgment, the judge did not need additionally to assess whether the appellant’s UK traffickers would present a risk, because the judge had found the appellant had not been trafficked in the UK. The judge did not err in their approach to assessing the risk to the appellant as a trafficked woman.

Notice of Decision

The decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve the making of an error on a point of law.

The determination of the First-tier Tribunal stands.

D Cotton

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

3 December 2025