Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-002696

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/66839/2023
LP/03641/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 3rd of December 2025

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE L MURRAY

Between

ABS
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
And

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Coyte, Solicitor
For the Respondent: Ms Everett, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 7 November 2025

Order regarding anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008,the appellant and 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 any member of his family. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS
Introduction
1. The Appellant applied for international protection on 5 November 2021 and the Respondent’s decision refusing his application is dated 7 December 2023. The Appellant’s appeal against that decision was dismissed by First-tier Tribunal Judge Eldridge (the FTTJ) in a decision promulgated on 16 April 2025. The Appellant appealed on four grounds, namely that the FTTJ failed to provide reasons in a relation to a core aspect of the Appellant’s account (Ground 1); materially misdirected himself in relation to section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 (Ground 2); failed to provide reasoned findings in relation to his assessment that the supporting letter confirming the duration of the Appellant’s admission to hospital was an unreliable document Ground 3) and applied the wrong standard of proof in relation to whether the Appellant had family and friends to return to in Iraq (Ground 4).
2. Permission to appeal was granted by First-tier Tribunal Judge L K Gibbs on 18 June 2025. All grounds were found to be arguable.
3. The matter came before me to determine whether the First-tier Tribunal had erred in law, and if so whether any such error was material such that the decision should be set aside.
The hearing
4. Mr Coyte submitted that the FTTJ failed to make any findings on the Appellant’s relationship and consequently the whole determination fell down. He did not add to the other grounds which spoke for themselves. In relation to the hospital letter, he said that it was unclear what points were made by the Respondent in submissions but it was not a matter raised in the Respondent’s review.
5. Ms Everrett conceded that she saw the force in Ground 1 as the FTTJ said he would return to make a finding regarding the relationship and did not do so. However, she submitted that it was clear that the FTTJ did not accept the Appellant’s account from his conclusion at paragraph 26. She accepted that she could not take her submission further than that. With regard to Ground 2, the Judge was entitled to come to his findings in relation to the Appellant’s failure to claim asylum at the earliest opportunity. Addressing Ground 3, the treatment of the hospital letter was more difficult to defend. However there were inconsistencies in the Appellant’s account. It was not accepted that the FTTTJ applied the wrong standard of proof as asserted in Ground 4 as he had found it overwhelmingly likely that the Appellant had family and friends in Iraq.
6. Mr Coyte in reply argued that it was insufficient to find that the Appellant’s account was not credible without a finding on the relationship particularly as the FTTJ found that the Appellant had been consistent in many respects. The judgement was unsustainable without a clear finding. He accepted that the wording in relation to Ground 4 came close to the lower standard of proof. Regarding s8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004, the Appellant was aware that he was in Turkey but there was no indication that he was aware he was in France. Failure to claim asylum in France had not been identified in the refusal letter. With regard to the alleged inconsistencies in the Appellant’s evidence regarding the hospital attendance, the Appellant corrected his account in a subsequent witness statement which was not considered by the FTTJ.
Conclusions – Error of Law
7. All four Grounds impugn the FTTJ’s adverse credibility findings. In assessing whether the Grounds are made out, have considered the decision read as a whole. I have considered Grounds 1 and 3 first, as they both assert a failure to provide reasons or adequate reasons in relation to core matters and documentation.
8. The FTTJ succinctly summarizes the basis of the Appellant’s claim at paragraph 15 of the decision and sets out that the Appellant asserts a long-standing relationship with a young woman outside marriage, that her father was a member of the KDP and influential, and that the Appellant was beaten up and hospitalized for about 2 months and left Iraq on the night of his release. The FTTJ acknowledges at paragraph 16 of the decision that the Appellant has maintained many of the core aspects of his account from the outset. At paragraph 17 the FTTJ finds that it is not easy to accept that a sustained relationship with a very young woman could have been maintained over time and without parental questioning but states that it is not impossible and that “I return to this part of his account later”. The FTTJ then addresses the Appellant’s account in relation to his ID documents and finds that it is contradictory and that he has a CSID. He addresses the hospital letter and finds it unreliable, finds that the Appellant passed through safe countries and rejects his reason for failing to claim asylum in France. He finds that this adversely impacted the credibility of the events claimed and that he had family and friends to whom he could return. At paragraph 26 he concludes that the Appellant’s account of the principal events in Iraq are not credible and he does not accept them.
9. The Appellant argues in relation to Ground 1 that it is impossible to determine whether the FTTJ had in fact accepted the Appellant’s account of the relationship as, despite having expressly stated that he will return to that part of the Appellant’s account later he does not do so. The Respondent effectively argues that despite not returning to the Appellant’s account of his relationship, the FTTJ must have rejected that part of his claim because of his conclusions at paragraph 26.
10. It is not in issue that the reason the Appellant asserted that he could not return to Iraq was because of the adverse treatment he received due to the discovery of the relationship. This was the core of his claim. There are no express findings in the decision on the existence of the relationship. The FTTJ acknowledges both that the Appellant has “maintained many of the core aspects of this account from the outset” and that the account of the relationship is “not impossible”. He does not, despite expressly stating that he will, return to the Appellant’s account of being able to maintain the relationship over time. I find that the relationship was a matter in respect of which sustainable reasoned findings needed to be made. In the absence of such findings the reasoning was not adequate. Ground 1 is therefore made out.
11. I therefore address Ground 3. The FTTJ considers the letter from the hospital documenting the Appellant’s traumatic injury at paragraphs 20 and 21 of the decision. It is unclear what the Respondent’s position was in relation to the letter as it was not addressed in the Respondent’s review. I do not have any record of the submissions made at the hearing. The letter purports to emanate from the Gastroenterology & Hepatology Teaching Hospital and is dated 27 February 2024. It confirms the Appellant was admitted on 24 November 2020 and discharged on 24 January 2021 and documents that surgery took place. The FTTJ found that there was no indication of how any traumatic injury was caused and no record of any history taken from the Appellant. He found that the Appellant had given some contradictory accounts of how long he was detained in hospital and when he left, and that he had been described in the letter as a student whereas he was a shop-keeper. He rejected the Appellant’s explanation that he retained his student card and that he had offered it at the hospital as it reduced his fees. He noted that there was no address for him in the letter, no family relationships described and no date of birth and that the contact details on the letter were a mobile phone number and a Gmail account which he considered unlikely to be the case. Further, the Appellant had given no further evidence of trauma including of attention in the UK.
12. The thrust of the criticism of the FTTJ’s reasoning in the Grounds is that the FTTJ failed to provide any reference to background information, or otherwise explain why such a document originating from Iraq should contain the information which it was said not to record.
13. It is trite law that the FTTJ was required to decide whether the documents adduced by the Appellant were reliable after consideration of the evidence in the round (Tanveer Ahmed v SSHD [2002] UKIAT 00439. It was of course open to the FTTJ to find that inconsistencies in the Appellant’s account went to the question of whether the letter was a reliable document. However, there is force in the Appellant’s argument that adverse findings that arose from conclusions about the absence of certain information in the letter and the nature of the contact details were not safe in the absence of background evidence as to what a hospital letter from Iraq could contain. I find that this clearly formed part of the reasoning for the conclusion that the letter was not a reliable document and that Ground 3 is therefore also made out.
14. I conclude that the absence of a clear finding on the central plank of the Appellant’s account and the error in relation to the assessment of the medical letter renders the decision unsustainable, as the Appellant contends. I have nevertheless considered the other grounds. The FTTJ records at paragraph 22 of the decision that the Appellant agrees that he passed though safe countries, said he was fingerprinted in France but did not tell the authorities there that he wanted to claim protection. The reason the FTTJ records that the Appellant gave for this was because he was told by the agent that he could not claim there. The FTTJ finds that there is no reason why a person passing into the hands of those authorities could not claim protection.
15. The Respondent concluded in the refusal letter that the Appellant’s behaviour engaged section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc.) Act 2004. The reasoning provided was that the Appellant had travelled through numerous countries on the way to the UK, specifically Turkey of which he was aware. The Respondent was wrong to refer to Turkey as a safe third country as it is not a safe country as defined by section 8 (7) of the same Act. However, the Tribunal, as a deciding authority under section 8 (1) of the same Act, was required to have regard to the statutory matters in section 8 and it was for the Tribunal to assess whether the Appellant had failed to take advantage of a reasonable opportunity to make an asylum claim while in a safe country. France is a safe country for the purposes of section 8. Mr Coyte submitted that there was no indication that the Appellant was aware that he was in France. I note that the Appellant states in his witness statement dated 3 May 2025 that he was possibly in France but he was not sure. It appears therefore that the evidence recorded by the FTTJ as to having been fingerprinted in France must have been given at the hearing. I have not been provided with a transcript or agreed record of the evidence at the hearing but it has not been argued that the Appellant did not give that evidence at the hearing and I have no reason to doubt that the FTTJ was correct in recording it as he does in the decision.
16. In KA (Afghanistan) v SSHD [2019] EWCA Civ 914 the Court of Appeal emphasised the importance of consideration of the realistic chances an appellant had to claim asylum in a safe third country and the need for clear reasons before holding this against an asylum seeker. I conclude that it was open to the FTTJ to conclude that the Appellant did, when fingerprinted, have a reasonable opportunity to make an asylum claim in France and it was open to him to reject the Appellant’s explanation.
17. I find, taken in isolation, that Ground 2 is not made out. However, since the weight to be attached to the behaviour damaging the Appellant’s credibility under section 8 depends on the overall assessment of credibility (JT (Cameroon) v SSHD [2008] EWCA Civ 878) in light of my findings with regard to Ground 1 and 3 it is clear that this finding cannot stand.
18. I understand Mr Coyte as having conceded that the FTTJ did not misdirect himself in relation to the burden of proof and find Ground 4 is not made out.
19. I have considered whether the decision should be re-made in the Upper Tribunal with regard to the decisions of Begum (Remaking or remittal) Bangladesh [2023] UKUT 00046 (IAC) and AEB v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWCA Civ 1512. In light of my conclusions above I am of the view that the due to the nature and extent of fact finding the appeal should be remitted to the First-tier Tribunal with no findings preserved.

Notice of Decision
The making of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved the making of a material error of law and I set it aside.
The appeal is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal with no findings preserved.

L Murray

Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

15 November 2025