Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-003128

First-tier Tribunal No:
PA/68000/2023
LP/02896/2025

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 4th of November 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE RUDDICK

Between

JK
(ANONYMITY DIRECTION MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr. Z. Malik KC, instructed by K & A Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr B. Hulme, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 23 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 her. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS

1. The appellant was granted anonymity by the First-tier Tribunal (“FTT”) and I consider that it is appropriate that the anonymity order continue. The appellant has made a claim for international protection and at this stage in her claim the public interest in maintaining the confidentiality of the asylum process and in the UK’s compliance with its international obligations outweighs the public interest in the precise details of her identity.
2. The appellant is a citizen of Pakistan of Pathan heritage. She says that when she was 18 years old, she was coerced by her family into marrying a much older cousin, but her family allowed her to postpone moving into her husband’s home or consummating the marriage until after she had finisher her studies. In the meantime, she met her second husband, whom she secretly married for love in 2021. She says that her mother discovered her communications with her second husband in July 2021, putting her in fear of “honour” violence from her family. She was also coming under pressure to begin her married life with her first husband because she had finished her studies. She and her second husband therefore contacted an agent to seek help in fleeing the country. The agent advised her to apply for a student visa, with her second husband as her dependant, and then to claim asylum after arriving in the UK and collecting her BRP. She arrived in the UK on 13 February 2022 and claimed asylum on 19 April 2022. Her second husband was a dependant on her claim.
3. The respondent refused the appellant’s asylum claim on 18 December 2023 and the FTT dismissed her appeal in a decision dated 5 May 2025. The appellant now appeals with permission against the FTT’s decision.
4. The FTT did not believe the appellant’s account. There was therefore no need for it to consider whether the appellant would have been at real risk of serious harm from her family if her account had been true, or whether she would have been able to obtain protection from the police in Pakistan or relocate safely and reasonably somewhere else within the country.
5. The appeal to the Upper Tribunal therefore turns entirely on whether there was a material error in the FTT’s credibility assessment.
The FTT’s reasoning
6. The FTT’s reasons for rejecting the appellant’s credibility can be summarised as follows:
(i) The appellant had provided no documentary evidence of her first marriage [22]; her reason for not having brought her first marriage certificate with her (namely that she was “under so much stress when she left she did not bring it”) was rejected because she had remembered to bring her second marriage certificate: [23].
(ii) The marriage certificate from her second marriage gave her marital status as “unmarried”; the appellant’s explanation for this was that the first Nikah had not been registered with the civil authorities. The FTT “did not accept that”: [22].
(iii) The appellant had given “false information” on her visa application form, in which she had stated that she was living with her second husband in Mordan. However, she said at the hearing that she had been living with her parents in Peshawar until she left Pakistan: [24].
(iv) The appellant had been living with her second husband at the time of the visa application, as stated in the form and confirmed by the joint bank statements she had submitted in support of the application. The appellant’s explanation for the joint bank statements was that “when she applied for the visa the officials needed a variety of documents and that she had to show that she was living and registered at the same address as her husband.” The FTT rejected this explanation because, “She produced no evidence to show that this was a requirement and I do not find this to be credible.”: [24]
(v) It was not credible that the appellant came from a strict family who controlled her and had forced her to marry against her will because she had been able to obtain an ID card, apply for a visa and attend the offices of the visa agent without their knowledge. It was not plausible that if her family were as strict as she claimed, she would have been able to “go off with a strange man whenever she needed to.”: [25]
(vi) The appellant was allowed to go to university, which indicated that she came from a “liberal family”, as did the fact that she had been permitted to work: [26].
(vii) It was “highly implausible” that her mother would not have immediately told her father after discovering that the appellant had been exchanging text messages with her second husband: [27]
(viii) It was “totally implausible” that the appellant would have been able to carry on her relationship with her husband for three years without discovery, given that she said that her uncle was a powerful community leader: [28]
(ix) The appellant had been inconsistent about where her second marriage took place: [29]
(x) There was no evidence of where the second marriage took place and no statements from witnesses: [29]
(xi) The appellant had provided no photos of her first husband, no wedding pictures and no marriage certificate: [30].
(xii) The appellant had been inconsistent about the nature of her work, saying at Q1.14 of “her SI1” (presumably, first screening interview) that she was a lawyer, at Q1.14 of “her SI2” that she was a PR Officer, and at her substantive interview at Q86 that she was working in a hospital: [30].
(xiii) The appellant claimed that there was an FIR against her but this was not before the FTT: [31].
(xiv) The appellant was “in breach” of Section of the Asylum (Treatment of claimants, etc.) Act 2004 because she had applied for a student visa when she knew she intended to claim asylum, had delayed in claiming asylum after her arrival and “her reasons for this delay are not accepted”, and she did not report the loss of her passport.
7. At [34], the FTT put no weight on the appellant’s second husband’s oral evidence, as much of it was almost word-for-word the same as hers.
The grounds of appeal
8. The appellant has been granted permission to appeal on five grounds:
1. The FTT erred as to the burden and standard of proof;
2. The FTT erred by proceeding on the basis that the appellant was required to corroborate her account;
3. The FTT’s material findings “are without evidential foundation, inconsistent with the objective evidence, and inadequately reasoned.”; and
4. The FTT erred in its application of Section 8 by he appellant’s behaviour as inevitably rather than only potentially damaging to credibility. This was contrary to JT (Cameroon) v SSHD [2008] EWCA Civ 878 at [20] and [24].
5. The approach taken to the husband’s evidence was unfair and perverse.
The hearing
6. At the hearing before me, I had an appellant’s bundle of 467 pages. There was no Rule 24 response from the respondent. I asked Mr Malik and Mr Hulme to focus their submissions on Ground Three and Four, explaining that I considered these to be the strongest grounds and that if they were made out, there would be no need to consider the other grounds. I am grateful to both representatives for their succinct and helpful submissions.
7. After hearing from the representatives, I allowed the appeal and summarised my reasons. I now set those reasons out in more detail.
Discussion
8. In deciding whether the FTT’s decision involved the making of a material error of law, I have reminded myself of the principles set out in a long line of cases, including Ullah v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2024] EWCA Civ 201, at [26], Yalcin v SSHD [2024] EWCA Civ 74, at [50] and [51], Gadinala v SSHD [2024] EWCA Civ 1410, at [46] and [47], and Volpi & Anor v Volpi [2022] EWCA Civ 464, at [2-4] and of the danger of “island-hopping”, rather than looking at the evidence, and the reasoning, as a whole. See Fage UK Ltd & Anor v Chobani UK Ltd & Anor [2014] EWCA Civ 5 [114].
9. Even bearing those principles in mind, I consider that the FTT did err in the way identified at Grounds Three and Four and that the errors are material.
10. Several of the adverse credibility points are entirely unexplained, as argued under Ground Three. The FTT does not say why she “does not accept” that the first Nikah had not been registered. There was nothing fundamentally implausible in the claim that the first Nikah had not been registered, given the country evidence before the FTT stating that registration was not required in order for the marriage to be considered religiously and legally valid and the appellant’s account of having persuaded her family to allow her to delay the consummation of the marriage. Nor does the FTT explain why it rejects the appellant’s claim that she was required to submit evidence of cohabitation with her second husband in support of her visa application; as he was applying for a dependant visa at the same time, it is highly likely that there was such a requirement.
11. Although it is trite that the FTT is not required to refer to all of the evidence before it, there is no reference anywhere in the decision to the country evidence that was before the FTT and nothing to indicate that the country context played a role in the credibility assessment. The FTT’s finding that the appellant’s family must have been “liberal” if it allowed her to attend university and to work does not appear to be based in any country evidence that was before the FTT. There is no explanation for why the mother’s behaviour was deemed “highly implausible”.
12. Several other credibility points are based on the inherent implausibility of the certain aspects of the appellant’s account (listed above at (v), (vii), (viii)). The only context referred to in these findings is the appellant’s own account. I consider that there is another error here in the finding that the appellant would not have been able to “go off with a strange man whenever she needed to” if her family were as strict as she claims. There is nothing wrong with finding specific events implausible within the context of the appellant’s own account, but the difficulty here it that this is not a reasonable summary of the appellant’s evidence. There is nothing to indicate that she said that she “went off” with her second husband “whenever she needed to”. Even bearing in mind that FTT decisions must not be subjected to strict textual analysis, I find that this significant exaggeration of the appellant’s evidence undermines the adverse plausibility finding.
13. I also agree with the appellant that the FTT misdirected itself in law in its application of Section 8 in the ways identified at Ground Four. The FTT does not consider the appellant’s explanations for coming to the UK on a student visa or for not reporting the loss of her Pakistani passport. It gives no reason for not accepting her explanation for the delay in claim from February until April 2022. As at [22] (with regard to the non-registration of the first Nikah) and [24] (with regard to the requirement to provide evidence of cohabitation in support of the visa application), the FTT merely states its conclusion that the appellant’s reasons for delay “are not accepted”. It does not explain why any of the identified Section 8 conduct actually, rather than just potentially, damaged her credibility. Although it is trite that the FTT is not required to say what it makes of every submission made before it or to set out every step in its reasoning, the use of the word “breach” and the failure to engage with the applicant’s explanations or address the link between the conduct and the damage to credibility (particularly with regard to the use of a false visa to reach the UK, which is conduct that has been recognised since 1951 as potentially consistent with being in need of international protection), taken together, point towards the damage to credibility having wrongly been treated as automatic: SM (Section 8: Judge’s process) Iran [2005] UKAIT 00116 (05 July 2005) ,
14. Although these specific errors were not pointed out in the grounds, I also find that two of the FTT’s adverse credibility points are in direct contradiction to the evidence. The appellant has never been inconsistent about her work, as the FTT found at [30]. The document the FTT refers to as “her SI1” is in fact her husband’s “Dependant Screening Interview”, and it is he who says he is a lawyer. There is only one Screening Interview record for the appellant, in which she says that she was a “PR Officer”. This is also what she said at her substantive interview in answer to Q7, “Have you ever worked in Pakistan, if yes, what jobs have you had in Pakistan?”; she replied, “I worked in a hospital in Pakistan as a PR officer.” The appellant had provided a police report against her made by her father, dated 13 February 2022. Although this is not technically an FIR, this is how the appellant and her second husband refer to this police report in their evidence. It was open to the FTT to note that a police report is not the same as an FIR, and to draw adverse inferences from that, but that is not what the FTT did. It noted that the claimed FIR had not been provided, which is not accurate.
15. Finally, I consider that the two adverse credibility points made at [24] are internally inconsistent. The FTT cannot both fault the appellant for giving false information in her visa application by saying that she was living with her husband in Mordan and at the same time find that she was living with him there.
16. A number of the FTT’s other adverse credibility points are cogent. In particular, much of the corroborating evidence that the FTT faulted the appellant for not providing should have been reasonably available to her, such that there was no error in putting some adverse weight on its absence. In deciding whether the errors identified above are material, I have taken into account the cogency of these other credibility points. I have also reminded myself that the FTT had the advantage of hearing directly from the appellant and her husband by video link. Nonetheless, given the number of errors identified above and the fact that credibility must be assessed in the round, I consider the FTT’s decision to reject the appellant’s credibility to be unsustainable.
17. Because the appeal was dismissed solely on credibility grounds, the decision must be set aside in its entirety.
18. As Mr Malik and Mr Hulme agreed, given that Grounds Three and Four are made out, there is no need to consider the rest of the grounds.
19. I have taken into account the guidance set out in Begum (Remaking or remittal) Bangladesh [2023] UKUT 00046 (IAC) and AEB v SSHD [2022] EWCA Civ 1512, as well as the Practice Statement of 11 June 2018, and I consider that remittal is appropriate given the extensive fact-finding required.

Notice of Decision
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal dated 5 May 2025 was vitiated by material errors of law and is set aside in its entirety.
The appeal is remitted to the First-tier Tribunal for a fresh hearing on all issues, before any other judge.

E. Ruddick

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

24 October 2025