Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-003369

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/63056/2023
LP/11925/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 2nd of October 2025

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE LAY

Between

MT
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
v

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr A Eaton instructed by Barnes Harrild & Dyer Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms A Ahmed, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House 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

1. The Appellant is an Iraqi national, of Kurdish origin, whose asylum and human rights claims were refused by the Respondent in a decision dated 20 November 2023. His appeal against that refusal was heard by First-tier Tribunal Judge Dobe (hereafter, “FTJ”) on 5 March 2025, with a determination promulgated on 31 March 2025. The FTJ dismissed the Appellant’s appeal on all grounds.

2. The Appellant sought permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal. Permission was granted by First-tier Tribunal Judge Clarke on all four pleaded grounds, in a decision dated 24 July 2025.

3. At the error of law hearing, there was a 543-page composite bundle. Bundle references in this determination are in the format as follows: [CB: XX]: [Composite Bundle: page number]. There was no Rule 24 reply from the Respondent.

The grounds of appeal on which permission had been granted

4. Ground I contended that the FTJ had failed to apply anxious scrutiny to the evidence.

5. Ground II contended that the FTJ had erred “in the assessment of credibility”, in particular by failing to heed the principles reaffirmed in MAH (Egypt) v SSHD [2023] EWCA Civ 216 and, at paragraph 31 of the determination under challenge, explicitly demanding that that there be corroborative evidence to establish the Appellant’s past account and failing to have regard to evidence that had been adduced.

6. Ground III challenged the FTJ’s approach to the evidence of risk flowing from sur place activity in the UK. Ground IV challenged the FTJ’s finding that the Appellant could return with appropriate documentation such that there would be no breach of Article 3 ECHR.

Submissions & concessions

7. At the outset of the hearing, Mr Eaton was invited, at least initially, to focus on Ground II, in light of the centrality of paragraph 31 to the reasoning/findings in the determination. He submitted that it could not rationally be concluded by the FTJ that there was “no evidence” to support the Appellant’s case that he had been subject to death threats owing to his outspoken criticism of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry and had suffered adverse attention from the Iraqi authorities. First, there was the written and oral evidence of the Appellant himself, about which there is no analysis in the determination. Second, there was evidence submitted of death threats [CB: 87] (with certified translation). The failure to have regard to evidence/the demand for specific additional documentary corroboration for the issues listed in paragraph 31 was in direct contravention of the correct approach to be taken. Further, Mr Eaton submitted that by rejecting the protection claim in this way, the approach to the Appellant’s credibility leached into the findings on the sur place claim and the documentation issue.

8. I was grateful to Ms Ahmed, for the Secretary of State, for her considered and realistic concession in reply that, by way of paragraph 31(a) – “there is no evidence that he received death threats” – the FTJ had indeed materially erred in his approach to the evidence, not least because there had been documentary evidence of a death threat, as highlighted by Mr Eaton.

9. In light of the Respondent’s concession during the hearing that there had been a material error of law in the approach taken to credibility on a central issue, it was in my view otiose to proceed to full argument on Grounds I, III and IV, since the logical knock-on effect of Ground II being established was that the FTJ’’s approach to all issues of credibility in the appeal had been tainted.

Conclusions

10. I find that Ground II is made out and that the determination needs to be set aside.

11. Given the nature of the material error of law, there was agreement between the parties that this is an appeal which should be remade de novo.

12. I heard submissions on appropriate venue. I have had regard to Section 7 of the “Senior President’s Practice Statements of the Immigration and Asylum Chambers of the First-tier Tribunal and the Upper Tribunal” (SPT Ryder, 11 June 2018) and Begum (Remaking or remittal) Bangladesh [2023] UKUT 46 (IAC). Remittal to the First-tier is not the usual course but I find that it is appropriate in the circumstances of this appeal.

Notice of Decision

The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is set aside for error of law and I direct that the appeal be remitted to the First-tier Tribunal de novo, for the consideration of any Judge except FTJ Dobe.

Taimour Lay

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

26 September 2025