Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-000854
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/02402/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 24 August 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE KAMARA

Between

LM
(NO ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

Secretary of State for the Home Department
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr A Miah, counsel instructed by IP Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms A Nolan, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 10 August 2026

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
Introduction
1. The appellant has been granted permission to appeal the decision of the First-tier Tribunal dismissing his protection appeal following a hearing which took place on 17 October 2025.

Anonymity
2. I have continued the anonymity order made by the First-Tier Tribunal. I have considered the public interest in open justice but conclude that it is outweighed by the importance of facilitating the discharge of the United Kingdom’s obligations to those claiming international protection, because of the need for confidentiality.
Factual Background
3. The appellant is a national of Pakistan, now aged thirty-four, who entered the United Kingdom on 8 October 2022 to study civil engineering and construction. His asylum claim was made on 7 July 2023 and was based on his claim to have been in a same-sex relationship in Pakistan with a man, “FU,” whom he was seen kissing in a car parked in a busy area. The appellant also stated that FU joined him in the United Kingdom and that they resumed their relationship for a time. The appellant also claimed to be in an open relationship with a man referred to as AR.
4. The appellant’s protection claim was refused by way of a decision dated 13 May 2024. In that decision, no aspect of the factual basis of the appellant’s claim was accepted owing to inconsistencies in his account as well as his inability to provide detailed answers about his sexuality, his feelings towards his claimed partner FU or those that he claimed wished to harm him, when interviewed substantively by the Home Office.
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal
5. At the appeal hearing before the First-tier Tribunal, the sole issue to be determined was whether the appellant is a bisexual man. The respondent accepted that if his claim was credible, he would face persecution in Pakistan on account of his sexual orientation. The appellant and his claimed partner AR gave evidence. As AR had been recognised as a refugee, the respondent accepted that he was a gay man. The judge concluded that the appellant had not given a truthful account of events in Pakistan, that he was not a bisexual man and that he was not in a genuine and subsisting relationship with AR.
The appeal to the Upper Tribunal
6. The three grounds of appeal can be summarised as follows.
Ground one: the judge failed to make alternative findings on whether the events had happened on the lower standard of proof applicable to Article 3 ECHR, and therefore whether an Article 3 ECHR risk would arise on return;
Ground two: the judge failed to apply the lower standard of proof to the appellant’s relationship with AR;
Ground three: the judge failed to consider a material factor, that being that AR is a refugee by reason of his sexuality.
7. Permission to appeal was granted on grounds one and two alone, with the judge granting permission making the following remarks.
It is arguable that the FtT erred by not considering whether the appellant’s account of his past persecution in Pakistan was true to the lower standard for the purposes of the article 2 and 3 aspects of his human rights claim. It may be difficult for the appellant to show any error in this regard was material, given the terms in which the FtT found against him with regard to his account of events in Pakistan (“I find on the balance of the probabilities that the events the Appellant describes […] simply did not happen”). It is also difficult to see how it would be material, because the FtT went on to find to the lower standard that the appellant was not now bisexual or in a relationship with AR as he claimed. However, materiality is a matter for the error of law hearing.
Ground Two is that this error may have infected the FtT’s findings as to whether the appellant was now bisexual in a relationship with AR. Although this issue was determined according to the correct standard for an article 3 claim, it is submitted that the outcome might have been different if the account of past events in Pakistan had been determined to the lower, article 3 standard and accepted. Given the overlap between these two grounds, they stand or fall together.
8. The respondent filed no Rule 24 response.
The error of law hearing
9. The matter comes before the Upper Tribunal to determine whether the decision contains an error of law and, if it is so concluded, to either re-make the decision or remit the appeal to the First-tier Tribunal to do so. A bundle was submitted by the appellant containing, inter alia, the core documents in the appeal, including the appellant’s and respondent’s bundles before the First-tier Tribunal. Also included in the bundle was a document purporting to be a marriage certificate which indicated that the appellant and another gentleman married on “Eighth June 2026.” There was, rightly, no application made to admit this evidence under rule 15(2A) of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, as this event postdated the hearing by around eight months.
10. The hearing was attended by representatives for both parties as above. Both representatives made submissions and the conclusions below reflect those arguments and submissions where necessary. Mr Miah did not attempt to resurrect the third ground, upon which permission was expressly refused.
Discussion
Ground one:
11. That the judge failed to make alternative findings on whether the claimed occurred with reference to the lower standard of proof applicable to Article 3 ECHR is an error of law. Nonetheless, I do not accept that the error was material for the following reasons.
12. This experienced judge had the benefit of hearing evidence from the appellant as well as his witness and claimed partner AR. Thereafter, the judge made a holistic assessment of the protection claim advanced by the appellant.
13. At [31], the judge found that the appellant was not a witness of truth and that his evidence could not be relied upon. A series of reasons are provided for this conclusion, none of which have been challenged in the grounds. Those reasons include that it was “inherently implausible” that the appellant would have risked openly kissing FU in a public place, outside a hotel, in a bazaar area, in circumstances where he claimed that a previous partner had been killed owing to his sexuality. Further reasons provided by the judge include that the appellant’s evidence was vague as to how it was that he received such extensive support from his family and friends notwithstanding the stigma attached to gay and bisexual men in Pakistan, that support extended as far as his father paying for his overseas studies.
14. The judge attached no weight to photographs or a fatwa threatening that the appellant and FU will be stoned to death, providing sustainable reasons which are set out at [33] of the decision. The judge was entitled to consider the absence of a witness statement from FU and his non-attendance at the hearing in circumstances where FU had claimed asylum and was named in the fatwa.
15. At [35], the judge concluded, with reference to the balance of probabilities, that the events described by the appellant “simply did not happen.”
16. There is no support anywhere in the decision for the argument that the judge would have, notwithstanding the strong, unchallenged, credibility findings, allowed this appeal on Article 3 ECHR grounds, applying the lower standard of proof.
Ground two:
17. It was further argued in the grounds that the judge had failed to apply the lower standard of proof to the appellant’s current relationship. This is evidently not the case, as can be seen from [37] on the decision, evidenced by the judge’s use of the term “not reasonably likely” when concluding that the appellant and AR are not in a same-sex relationship.
18. Mr Miah suggested that the judge’s findings on the relationship were infected by the judge’s earlier rejection of the protection claim. On the contrary, the judge separately considered whether the appellant had become a bisexual man, notwithstanding the finding that the events with FU in Pakistan did not happen [35] and applied the lower standard of proof [36] to this assessment. The judge’s conclusion at [37] that the appellant is not bisexual shows that even if the protection claim had been considered on the lower standard, the outcome would have, invariably, been the same.
Notice of Decision
The making of the decision of the First-tier Tribunal did not involve the making of an error on a point of law.
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal shall stand.

T Kamara

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

11 August 2026