Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-001417
UI-2026-001418
UI-2026-001420
UI-2026-001421

First-tier Tribunal No:
PA/58563/2024 LP/13389/2024
PA/58564/2024 LP/13391/2024
PA/58569/2024 LP/13396/2024
PA/58565/2024 LP/13393/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 15 September 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BARTLETT

Between

M.A.
MO.A.
MHH
MRH
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Badar, of Nasim & Co Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr Mullen, Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 8 September 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 appellants, likely to lead members of the public to identify the appellants. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS

1. The appellants made applications for protection that were rejected by the respondent. The appellants appealed that refusal to the First-tier Tribunal who refuse the appellant’s appeal in a decision promulgated on 3 January 2026 (the “Determination”).

2. The First-tier Tribunal granted permission to appeal on 22 March 2026 on all grounds noting that “ground 1 is the driver of this application”.

3. The grounds of appeal are:

a. Ground one – failure to lawfully engage with and assess the expert evidence;
b. Ground two – material misdirection in the assessment of state protection;
c. Ground three -unlawful treatment of corroborative documentary evidence;
d. ground four – irrational and immaterial credibility findings;
e. ground five – failure to conduct a lawful internal relocation assessment;
f. ground six – failure to assess risk cumulatively including political opinion.

Submissions

4. Mr Badar relied on a written skeleton argument and made oral submissions. Mr Mullen relied on the respondent’s rule 24 response and made oral submissions.

Decision

Ground one – failure to lawfully engage with and assess the expert evidence

5. Mr Badar submitted that the judge’s approach to the expert report fell foul of established case law in that the judge carried out the credibility assessment and only then considered the expert report. The written grounds submit that the Determination contains no meaningful analysis of the expert report and reaches conclusions on internal relocation and sufficiency of protection that are in direct contradiction to the report. I consider that the last submission (about sufficiency of protection and internal relocation) can be dealt with most appropriately under grounds 2 and 5.

6. [18] is a lengthy paragraph which sets out a large part of the judge’s findings which are:

a. The judge rejects the appellant’s claims that there is insufficient protection and that he cannot internal relocate because he fears the state, Mr Habib and Mr Havakat who he claims are people with power and influence – the judge finds such claims are internally inconsistent
b. The judge recites the appellant’s history of entering the United Kingdom on a student visa, taking over 1 ¼ years to claim asylum despite claiming to have received threats, then rejects the appellant’s reasons for delay (that he was scared and did not know whether the system would support him);
c. The judge records that even after all the dependent appellants travelled to the United Kingdom on visas and passports and they were all here safely, the appellant still made no protection claim;
d. The appellants’ claims that he stood up to Metro Housing and so he received threats via his mother and brother who remained in Pakistan after he came to the United Kingdom were found not credible. The judge gave reasons for this that his mother and brother lived in the same area but Metro Housing did not make an example of them;
e. The Judge rejected the appellant’s claims that he was a member of the PTI party in Pakistan and that his land problems and support of the PTI being inter-related were rejected. The reasons for rejecting this were;
i. the appellant claims to have organised gatherings in Pakistan but he has not done so in the United Kingdom;
ii. The photographs do not show the location or dates;
f. The judge found that f the appellant had been at risk, he would not have been able to leave Pakistan as easily as he did on his own passport;
g. The appellant failed to provide detail of the What’s app threats he claims to have received and it is not known who the threats are from;
h. The appellant has no documents to substantiate any of his claim;
i. The judge found the appellant failed to demonstrate non-state actors have sufficient power and influence over the authorities citing the CPIN;
j. The judge found Sufficient protection is available.

7. [19] to [21] set out authorities on how to correctly approach expert reports.

8. [22] refers to the expert report. In [22] the judge sets out the following:

a. The report sets out the difficulties for those wanting to challenge a seizure of land. However, the judge found the appellant not credible and does not find his land was seized as claimed;
b. even if his land was seized he has not met with any difficulty because he successfully reported the matter to the anticorruption unit and registered the case in court;
c. the judge refers to the appellant’s claim that threats were made to him and the police report provided but that his name does not appear on that report;
d. reference is made to the CPIN accepting that there can be a well-founded fear of persecution and bribery is rampant but this situation did not apply on the facts as found by the judge;
e. the appellant was found not to be credible in his claim that his tormentors set out to bribe him and then without reason escalated into threats of violence when he was in the United Kingdom, particularly as the appellant’s own mother and brother continue to live in Pakistan;
f. Metro Housing Society has powerful people but this did not matter because the appellant was found not to be threatened by anyone in Pakistan. The judge therefore did not accept the expert’s view that the appellant is at risk and could not avail himself of internal relocation.

9. In Mibanga v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2005] EWCA Civ 367 the Court of Appeal set out:

[24] “It seems to me to be axiomatic that a fact-finder must not reach his or her conclusion before surveying all the evidence relevant thereto. Just as, if I may take a banal if alliterative example, one cannot make a cake with only one ingredient, so also frequently one cannot make a case, in the sense of establishing its truth, otherwise than by combination of a number of pieces of evidence. Mr Tam, on behalf of the Secretary of State, argues that decisions as to the credibility of an account are to be taken by the judicial fact-finder and that, in their reports, experts, whether in relation to medical matters or in relation to in-country circumstances, cannot usurp the fact-finder's function in assessing credibility. I agree. What, however, they can offer, is a factual context in which it may be necessary for the fact-finder to survey the allegations placed before him; and such context may prove a crucial aid to the decision whether or not to accept the truth of them. What the fact-finder does at his peril is to reach a conclusion by reference only to the appellant's evidence and then, if it be negative, to ask whether the conclusion should be shifted by the expert evidence. Mr Tam has drawn the court's attention to a decision of the tribunal dated 5 November 2004, namely HE (DRC - Credibility and Psychiatric Reports) [2004] UKIAT 00321 in which, in paragraph 22, it said:

"Where the report is specifically relied on as a factor relevant to credibility, the Adjudicator should deal with it as an integral part of the findings on credibility rather than just as an add-on, which does not undermine the conclusions to which he would otherwise come."

[25] “In my view such was the first error of law into which the adjudicator fell. She addressed the medical evidence only after articulating conclusions that the central allegations made by the appellant were, in her extremely forceful if rather unusual phraseology, 'wholly not credible'. Furthermore she said that she considered that the evidence did not assist her because of her belief that the scars could well be reflective only of illness or disease. Although I accept that the fact that the appellant had identified only two of the scars as being thus reflective did not establish that the others were inflicted in the course of torture, it does -- and here I choose my words with care in the light of what I will be proposing to my Lords as the proper disposal of the appeal -- seem at first a little unlikely that, to take one example, the scars underneath the penis were the result of illness or disease rather than of the torture of the genitals, with which, by reference to a book on the medical documentation of torture, the doctor had regarded them as consistent. Unusually the adjudicator's determination had not included the usual express reminder to herself of the requisite standard of proof. Had she had the standard even more in the forefront of her mind; had she in particular considered the scars on the penis and also, perhaps, the multiple linear scars on the back; and above all, had she conducted her reference to the doctor's evidence at the right forensic time; then it is at least possible that she would have come to a different conclusion.”

10. It had become apparent that Mibanga had been misinterpreted at times and was used to overturn decisions because of the order in which issues were addressed in Determinations. The errors in this interpretation were highlighted in QC (verification of documents; Mibanga duty) China [2021] UKUT 00033 (IAC) the headnote of which sets out:

“(2) Credibility is not necessarily an essential component of a successful claim to be in need of international protection. Where credibility has a role to play, its relevance to the overall outcome will vary, depending on the nature of the case. What that relevance is to a particular claim needs to be established with some care by the judicial fact-finder. It is only once this is done that the practical application of the “Mibanga duty” to consider credibility “in the round” can be understood (Francois Mibanga v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2005] EWCA Civ 367). The significance of a piece of evidence that emanates from a third party source may well depend upon what is at stake in terms of the individual’s credibility.

(3) What the case law reveals is that the judicial fact-finder has a duty to make his or her decision by reference to all the relevant evidence and needs to show in their decision that they have done so. The actual way in which the fact-finder goes about this task is a matter for them. As has been pointed out, one has to start somewhere. At the end of the day, what matters is whether the decision contains legally adequate reasons for the outcome. The greater the apparent cogency and relevance of a particular piece of evidence, the greater is the need for the judicial fact-finder to show that they have had due regard to that evidence; and, if the fact-finder’s overall conclusion is contrary to the apparent thrust of that evidence, the greater is the need to explain why that evidence has not brought about a different outcome”

11. QC (verification of documents; Mibanga Duty) China sets out a review of case law in this area which I have read but will not repeat here due to its extensive nature. However, the following paragraphs are of note:

“42. Following Mibanga, there were many challenges to Tribunal decisions, on the asserted basis that a judge had failed to treat (usually) a medical report in the way the Court of Appeal had held it should be treated in that case. Dealing with such a challenge, the AIT in HH (medical evidence; effective Mibanga) Ethiopia [2005] UKAIT 00164 attempted to dispel some of the misconceptions that had grown up around Mibanga:-

“19. Finally, the grounds assert that the Immigration Judge erred in law in failing to treat the medical report as part of the overall evidence in this case, to be considered "in the round" before coming to any conclusion as to the appellant's credibility. Reference is made to the Court of Appeal judgments in Mibanga [2005] EWCA Civ 367, in particular paragraph 24 of the judgment of Wilson J:

"It seems to me to be axiomatic that a fact-finder must not reach his or her conclusion before surveying all the evidence relevant thereto. Just as, if I may take a banal if alliterative example, one cannot make a cake with only one ingredient, so also frequently one cannot make a case, in the sense of establishing its truth, otherwise than by combination of a number of pieces of evidence".
…

21. The Tribunal considers that there is a danger of Mibanga being misunderstood. The judgments in that case are not intended to place judicial fact-finders in a form of forensic straightjacket. In particular, the Court of Appeal is not to be regarded as laying down any rule of law as to the order in which judicial fact-finders are to approach the evidential materials before them. To take Wilson J's "cake" analogy, all its ingredients cannot be thrown together into the bowl simultaneously. One has to start somewhere. There was nothing illogical about the process by which the Immigration Judge in the present case chose to approach his analytical task.”

43. In S v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2006] EWCA Civ 1153, the Court of Appeal, faced with a similar submission, emphasised the exceptional nature of the factual matrix in Mibanga. Rix LJ said:-

“21. … The injuries described in the medical report in Mibanga were extraordinary in their severity and in their nature. There was a mass of scars of different kinds all over Mibanga's body, described in detail, for instance, at paragraph 11 and 12 of Wilson J's judgment in that case. Some of them were consistent with beatings with a belt. Many of them were consistent with bites from leeches, which reflected Mibanga's allegation that he had been thrown by way of punishment into a barrel of leeches. In particular (and when I say in particular, I reflect the use of that expression found repeatedly throughout Wilson J's judgment in referring to this aspect of the evidence in that case) there were two injuries, one at the tip and one at the base of Mibanga's penis, which were consistent with the application of electrodes to his genitals. Indeed, Dr Norman in that case had referred in her report to a book on the medical documentation of torture which provided the basis, or one of the bases, upon which she concluded that those injuries were consistent with the application of electrodes; see paragraph 25 of the judgment in that case.

22. It is against that background that although Wilson J, at paragraph 23 and elsewhere in his judgment, stated that he wished to be cautious about what he said about the facts of the case in the light of the consequence that the matter would have to be remitted for reconsideration at a new hearing, it is nevertheless clear from that paragraph 23 and elsewhere that he, and this court, had the very gravest doubts about the fact finding process which had been conducted by the adjudicator in that case. That, therefore, was the context in which Wilson J stated that the adjudicator had fallen into legal error by addressing the medical evidence only after she had conclusively rejected central features in the appellant's case as incredible. One only has to recite the facts of that case to see why the approach of the adjudicator there should have led to such concern.

23. In a concurring judgment, Buxton LJ referred to the error of law as being one in which there had been an artificial separation amounting to a structural failing, and not just an error of appreciation, in dealing with credibility entirely separately from the medical evidence.

24. It seems to me that the logic of Mibanga does not apply to this case, essentially for two separate reasons. One is that the structure of the immigration judge's reasoning here does not fall foul of that artificial separation and structural failure which were found to exist in Mibanga, and the other is that the medical evidence in Mibanga was so powerful and so extraordinary as to take that case into an exceptional area.”

12. The expert report sets out itself in numerous places that the report and its statements are predicated on the appellant’s credibility. For example, para 24 which sets out:

“his account of the treatment he would face if returned now is, in my professional view, if his account is determined to be credible by the tribunal, it is plausible in the volatile political climate of Pakistan”

13. Paragraph 26 of the expert report sets out

“In my professional opinion, assuming that the tribunal finds his claim to be credible, the appellant’s evidence aligns with the objective reality of the situation in Pakistan”

14. Paragraph 27 of the expert report in the limitations or qualifications to his conclusion sets out

“the professional opinions and conclusions set out in this report are subject to the limitation that I am assuming that the appellant is being truthful. The appellant’s actual credibility as a matter for the specialist tribunal.”

15. I find that these sections clearly demonstrate that the expert was aware that credibility was a matter for the tribunal and that his findings were about the country situation rather than credibility. As can be seen from the case law I have set out above, this demonstrates that the Mibanga duty has limited relevance here. In fairness to Mr Badar he did not raise Mibanga or any of the related case law with me. However, without relying on that line of authority his argument about the expert report is difficult to make out.

16. I find there can be no merit in a submission that because the judge made some findings then quoted some case law about how to approach expert reports and then, in a later paragraph considered, the expert report amongst other evidence, he committed an error. As the case law establishes, a judgement must set out something first.

17. As can be seen from the analysis I have set out above of in particular [18] and [22] the judge made credibility findings identify numerous points. These were open to the judge to make and these submissions in respect of these are nothing more than a disagreement with the judge’s conclusions. The expert report was not relevant to these findings.

18. The judge dealt with the expert report relatively swiftly however this is sufficient as is made clear by Paragraph 6 of the June 2024 Practice Direction from the Senior President of Tribunals on reasons for decisions which sets out “Providing adequate reasons does not usually require the First-tier Tribunal to identify all of the evidence relied upon in reaching its findings of fact, to elaborate at length its conclusions on any issue of law, or to express every step of its reasoning. The reasons provided that any decision should be proportionate, not only to the resources of the tribunal, but to the significant and complexity of the issues that have to be decided …”

19. A judge is not required to set out large tracts of the expert report to have considered it. The report had no relevance to the credibility matters the Judge dealt with first in the Determination.

20. I find the ground one does not disclose an error of law.

Ground two and five (Mr Badar took these together in his submissions) material misdirection in the assessment of state protection and failure to conduct a lawful internal relocation assessment

21. Grounds 2 and 5 could only be material errors if I find that there are errors in the judge’s assessment of the appellant’s risk profile such that he would need to avail himself of protection or internally relocate. The judge found that the appellant was not credible in his claims and that he did not have fears of anyone in Pakistan. As I have found that there is no error in this conclusion, any errors about internal relocation and state protection cannot be material.

Ground three -unlawful treatment of corroborative documentary evidence and ground four – irrational and immaterial credibility findings

22. Mr Bandar took grounds three and four together and I shall too.

23. Ground three asserts that the judge dismissed police reports and anticorruption establishment documents on the basis that they did not explicitly record threats directly made the appellant without engaging with his evidence that the threats were communicated through family members. It is correct that the judge did dismiss the police reports and anticorruption establishment documents. However, the judge’s position is more nuanced than that and it is that those documents do not assist the appellant because they did not refer to him. I do not find that this is an error of law. It is a matter for the judge as to how much weight to attach to the documents. In light of the documents failure to refer to the appellant in any way, the judge did not commit an error in finding that they did not assist the appellant.

24. Ground four was that reasons were not given to rejecting the appellant’s claim and particular reference is made to [18] in which the reasoning for rejecting the claims that the appellant suffered land problems and supported the PTI and referred to the appellant claiming to have gatherings in Pakistan.

25. I have set out above what were the judge’s findings in [18] and [22]. The appellant’s submission is that these findings were irrational. I find that the judge gave numerous reasons for finding that the appellant was not credible and these included:

a. His claims to have organised demonstrations in Pakistan were not credible in light of his failure to undertake any such political activity in the United Kingdom;
b. that the appellant’s claim to fear actors which had control of the state were not credible in light of the fact that the appellant left Pakistan on his own passport;
c. the appellant delayed considerably in claiming asylum (years 1 ¼ years);
d. the appellant delayed claiming asylum even after his immediate family entered the United Kingdom;
e. the appellant had no documentary evidence which in fact supported his claim;
f. the appellant provided a police report but it did not name him;
g. the photographs provided did not assist the appellant because they did not identify the location or the date;
h. threats to the appellant were not credible in light of the fact that his mother and brother were said to receive the threats but they lived without harm in the same area in Pakistan to the current day;
i. The appellant failed to provide detail of the What’s app threats he claims to have received and it is not known who the threats are from.

26. I find there is no merit in the suggestion that the judge’s reasons were irrational. The appellant’s witness statement referred to “a police report detailing threats made against me”. However, the report does not refer to the appellant and the judge stated this. Further, there was no submission that it did identify him in the report. It cannot be said that the judge’s finding in this regard was in any way irrational as the police report that the appellant himself relied on as evidencing threats against him did not identify threats against him. Again the judge referred to the appellant not having any documentary evidence to support his claim, it is not clear how this can be claimed to be irrational when it is in fact true. The appellant did not provide any documents that he was involved in any way with the PTI, the appellant did not have a coy of the What’s App threats it was said he received, the photo is just a photo without anything more. In relation to the other points, all that the submissions are is a disagreement with the findings; there is not even a submission that they are incorrect or a misinterpretation of the evidence. Mr Badar did not identify any error in the judge’s assessment by reference to the evidence.

27. The judge provided considerable reasons why the appellant was found not credible. It is not argued that any of those reasons are factually incorrect what is argued is that they are either insufficient and/or irrational. I find that they are sufficient as they go to material aspects of the claim and it cannot be said that they are irrational. The reasons given by the judge are reasonably brief however when the appellant’s written evidence is read it is clear that his own evidence is vague and non specific, his witness statement is particularly brief. Where the evidence is not detailed, reasons are most likely to be brief as there is little with which the judge can engage. There is no error of law.

28. This ground has no merit and I find that there is no arguable error of law

Ground six– failure to assess risk cumulatively including political opinion

29. The submission on this ground was that the judge failed to consider the cumulative risk to the appellant because of his support for the PTI party and his vulnerability from opposing land corruption. Mr Badar linked his submissions to his submissions on the previous grounds and in particular how the expert report was dealt with. I have set out above that I have found there were no errors in relation to how the judge dealt with the expert report. The judge rejected the fundamental core parts of the appellant’s claim and found that he was not at risk for any part of it. It is obvious that the submission that a failure to assess cumulative risks in this context has no merit and must fail.

30. I therefore find that ground six has no merit and fails.

Notice of Decision

There are no errors of law in the First-tier Tribunal’s determination dated 3 January 2026. The appeal is dismissed.

Judge Bartlett
Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

14 September 2026