Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Case No: UI-2026-003425
First-tier Tribunal No: PA/59838/2024
LP/01950/2025

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 25th of September 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE SKINNER

Between

AR
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Y. Alhani, Counsel, instructed direct access
For the Respondent: Ms A. Everett, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 23 September 2026

DECISION AND REASONS
Introduction
1. The appellant is a national of Pakistan. She appeals, with permission, against the decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Fox promulgated on 20 April 2026. The judge dismissed her appeal against the respondent's refusal of her protection and human rights claims.
2. I announced at the end of the hearing that I was not persuaded that the judge had made a material error of law and that I would therefore dismiss the appeal with reasons to follow in writing. These are those reasons.
Background
3. In summary, the appellant's case was that members of her family sought to compel her to marry a cousin. She formed a relationship with a tutor, Umar, without her family’s knowledge. She and Umar travelled to the United Kingdom in March 2020. Her family then learned of the relationship and threatened her. Umar left her shortly after their arrival. She said that, if returned to Pakistan, she would be at risk of an honour crime and would not have sufficient state protection or a reasonable internal relocation alternative.
4. The respondent did not accept the material facts of that account. The respondent also relied upon the appellant’s delay in claiming asylum.
Decision of the First-tier Tribunal
5. The judge recorded that the appellant came from what she described as a strict and patriarchal family. He did not consider it credible that, in those circumstances, she could have pursued higher education, travelled alone to classes six days a week, conducted a secret relationship with her tutor, obtained a passport and visa, and travelled internationally without her family’s knowledge. At paragraphs 70 and 71 he found that her account was not credible when considered both against the country material and against her own evidence.
6. At paragraphs 72 to 77 the judge considered evidence concerning the appellant’s father and a document headed “Evidence Report for [AR]” (“the report”). He found that the appellant had said in interview and in her first witness statement that her father was alive, but had later accepted that those answers were wrong. The report identified her father as one of the people from whom she was at risk. The judge also found that its description as a report prepared ‘for’ the appellant, when she had prepared it with assistance, was misleading. He gave it no meaningful weight and found that the appellant had misled either the respondent or the Tribunal.
7. The judge gave little weight to the other documents relied upon by the appellant. He referred to the absence of originals and of evidence showing the chain by which the documents had reached her. He considered that the email evidence of a recent threat had been contrived for the appeal.
8. At paragraphs 84 to 89 the judge identified further matters which he considered undermined the claimed relationship with Umar. Those included inconsistent evidence about whether the family had approached Umar's family, the absence of adverse consequences for Umar, the absence of evidence about the appellant's course or Umar's employment, and the degree of autonomy which the appellant said she had exercised.
9. At paragraphs 91 to 100 the judge addressed section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004. He rejected the appellant's explanation for her delay in claiming asylum and treated the inconsistencies which he identified as further damage to her credibility. He concluded that the core of the claim was fatally damaged and dismissed the appeal on all grounds.
Appeal to the Upper Tribunal
10. The First-tier Tribunal refused the appellant permission to appeal. She accordingly filed renewed grounds to the Upper Tribunal dated 2 July 2026. They are not divided into separately numbered grounds, contrary to the requirements stipulated in Rai (Grounds of Appeal; Limited Grant of Permission) [2025] UKUT 150 (IAC); [2025] 1 WLR 5441.
11. Nonetheless, they have been helpfully responded to in the respondent’s Rule 24 response as six complaints, which categorisation the appellant then also adopted in her Rule 25 reply. Those six complaints can be summarised as follows:
a. First, it is said that the judge misunderstood the Country Policy and Information Note concerning women fearing gender-based violence in Pakistan. The country material described the consequences when a disapproved relationship was discovered, but it did not establish that such a relationship could not be conducted in secret.
b. Second, the judge is said to have made a factual mistake about the appellant’s father. Her evidence in interview and in her amended witness statement was that both parents were dead. The grounds disputed that she had made the concession attributed to her at paragraph 73.
c. Third, the grounds challenge the treatment of the report at paragraphs 74 to 77. The appellant had explained that she prepared it with assistance because English was not her first language. She had not represented it as independent or objective evidence.
d. Fourth, the grounds challenge the treatment of the police document at paragraph 78. It was said that the fact that the document was a copy did not mean that it was not a First Information Report or that it was unreliable.
e. Fifth, it is said that the judge failed adequately to engage with the appellant's evidence when making the findings at paragraphs 84 to 89 and that his earlier errors infected those findings.
f. Sixth, the grounds challenge the assessment under section 8. The appellant had not claimed that she or anyone acting for her had approached the Home Office to extend her visa. Her evidence was that she believed visas had been extended automatically during the pandemic. She also contended that the judge treated section 8 as conclusive of credibility.
12. Deputy Upper Tribunal Judge Bagral granted permission on all grounds. She observed that some grounds were weak if viewed separately, but that it was arguable that a series of factual errors or mischaracterisations had affected the credibility assessment. Particular reference was made to the finding about the appellant’s father and to the treatment of the country material.
13. In the response under rule 24, the respondent opposed the appeal. As to the first ground, the respondent relied upon parts of the country material describing patriarchal restrictions, forced marriage, zina and honour crimes. It was submitted that the judge was entitled to find it implausible that the appellant had maintained a secret relationship for 18 months and had arranged a passport, visa and international travel without detection.
14. The respondent conceded that the judge had made a factual error by finding that the appellant had said that her father was alive. It was submitted that the error was immaterial because the judge had given numerous other reasons for rejecting the account. The respondent defended the treatment of the report and police document as a permissible assessment of their provenance and weight. The challenge to paragraphs 84 to 89 was said to be unparticularised and the judge's reasons were said to be adequate. Finally, the respondent submitted that section 8 had been treated as one factor in a holistic assessment, not as determinative.
15. In her reply under rule 25, the appellant maintained that the country material did not support the proposition that a relationship could not be conducted secretly. She submitted that the error concerning her father affected the assessment as a whole. She clarified that her complaint about the report concerned its use as an adverse credibility point, rather than simply the weight attached to it. She maintained that the absence of an original police document was not, without more, a proper reason to reject it. She also relied upon her evidence that Umar arranged the visa and maintained her challenge to the treatment of section 8.
16. At the hearing, Mr Alhani conceded ground 3, but otherwise made submissions in line with the grounds and the skeleton argument that had been filed. Ms Everett relied on the rule 24 response and made oral submissions in line with it.
17. I am grateful to both representatives for their assistance.
Analysis
Ground 1: the CPIN
18. The starting point in relation to this ground of challenge is the limited role of an appellate tribunal. It is not enough to show an error of law that the Upper Tribunal might have evaluated the evidence differently. An appeal court should interfere with a finding of fact only where the trial judge’s conclusion was rationally insupportable, rested upon a material mistake, or was reached by an error of principle: Volpi v Volpi [2022] EWCA Civ 464 at [2]-[5]. The judge’s reasons must be read fairly and as a whole, and need to explain why the case was decided without dealing separately with every evidential point: South Buckinghamshire District Council v Porter (No 2) [2004] UKHL 33; [2004] 1 WLR 1953 at [36].
19. In her written submissions before the First-tier Tribunal, the appellant relied upon a number of passages from the October 2025 CPIN concerning gender-based violence and honour crimes. These included evidence that gender-based violence was widespread and underreported; that honour killings remained prevalent; and that conduct regarded as violating social norms, including refusing an arranged marriage, marrying without the family’s consent, seeking a divorce, and having intimate or sexual relations outside marriage, could trigger an honour crime.
20. The respondent relied in the rule 24 response upon several other passages. In broad terms they identify that there are significant limitations faced by women in daily life and the influence of patriarchal attitudes upon access to education, healthcare and employment; indicate that refusal of an arranged marriage and a relationship outside marriage are among the common triggers for honour crimes; evince the prevalence of early and forced marriage; and explain that zina, involving sexual relations outside marriage, is a criminal offence carrying severe formal penalties.
21. As the grounds of appeal submit, the passages from the CPIN do not say that a woman from a strict family cannot conduct a relationship in secret. That, however, was not in my judgment the reasoning adopted by the judge. At paragraphs 68 to 71 he considered the account as a whole: the family was said to be strict and patriarchal and a forced marriage had been arranged; yet, for a substantial period the appellant pursued higher education, travelled alone to Lahore six days a week, spent time with a male tutor, maintained a relationship with him and prepared to leave Pakistan without detection. The country material was relevant because it described the restrictions which patriarchal attitudes and membership of a strict family of the sort the appellant claimed to have been a part may impose upon education, movement and relationships. The judge was entitled to compare that evidence with the degree of autonomy in the appellant's account and to find that there was an inconsistency between them, which damaged the credibility of the appellant’s account.
22. I also do not accept that the judge failed to give adequate reasons in this regard. I accept that his reasons could have been better expressed, but it is tolerably clear, as I have set out above, what his reasoning was.
23. Ground 1 accordingly fails.
Ground 2: Inconsistency about the death of the appellant’s father
24. The respondent properly concedes that paragraphs 72 and 73 contain a factual mistake. In her first substantive interview the appellant said that she lived with her brothers because her parents had passed away. Later in the same interview, when the interviewer referred to her father having passed away, she agreed.
25. However, in my judgment this error is not material. This is because the mistake does not remove the inconsistency which concerned the judge. The report was prepared by the appellant with assistance from R after the interviews. She relied on it as evidence of the threat she faced. It expressly identified her father by name and photograph as one of four family members from whom she “is at severe risk of harm”. It describes him as “A man with strong religious and political influence in their local area, [he] holds extremist views on eloping and family honour. His influence in the community makes the threat against Aqsa more severe and credible.” That evidence, that he is (currently) a threat to her, holds extremist views and weilds influence, is irreconcilable with the appellant’s repeated evidence that he had died when she was young. The judge rejected her explanation that she was merely using her father to describe characteristics shared by her brothers. He was plainly entitled to do so.
26. Paragraph 76 gave two alternatives: either the appellant had misled the respondent, or she was seeking to mislead the Tribunal. The first alternative rested upon the mistaken view of the interviews. The second, however, did not. It followed from the contents of a report which the appellant accepted she herself had helped to produce. In those circumstances the correction of paragraphs 72 and 73 would still have left the judge with the same stark inconsistency and the same basis for his concerns about the credibility of the appellant’s account in relation to the death or otherwise of her father. Thus, had the mistake about what the appellant had said about the father not been made, the judge would have been bound in any event to reach the same conclusion on the basis of what was said in the report. Ground two therefore also fails.
Ground 3: The ‘report’
27. The document was headed as an evidence report, was written in the third person and stated that it had been prepared ‘for’ the appellant. It did not identify the appellant and R as its authors. The judge was entitled to consider its provenance, presentation and contents when deciding what weight it carried. As Mr Alhani ultimately accepted, the judge was therefore entitled to attach little weight to a document which was, in substance and contrary to the misleading impression it plainly intended to convey, the appellant's own account rather than independent evidence. The grounds disclose disagreement with that assessment, not an error of law. The fact that the appellant had adduced something which contained what she knew to be false evidence in relation to her father and which purported not to be her evidence was also plainly relevant to credibility more generally. Ground 3 accordingly also falls to be dismissed.
Ground 4: The FIR
28. Contrary to the suggestion made in the grounds of appeal, the judge did not reject the police document merely because it was a copy. At paragraph 78 the judge referred both to the absence of an original and to the absence of evidence demonstrating the chain by which the documents had been produced and communicated. In accordance with Tanveer Ahmed, those were matters which he was entitled to consider when deciding whether the document could be relied upon. The fact that a document is described as a First Information Report does not establish its reliability or relieve the party relying upon it of explaining, so far as reasonably possible, what it is and how it was obtained.
29. Mr Alhani sought to suggest that the judge was required to assess the appellant’s credibility on the basis of her oral evidence and witness statements before assessing the reliability of the documents. I reject that. It is well established that both credibility and the reliability of documents must be assessed in the round.
30. Ground four fails.
Ground 5: Failure to consider appellant’s evidence and make balanced findings
31. This ground also fails. As Volpi, cited above, at [2] establishes, an appeal court is bound, unless there is compelling reason to the contrary, to assume that the trial judge has taken the whole of the evidence into his consideration; the validity of the findings of fact made by a trial judge is not aptly tested by considering whether the judgment presents a balanced account of the evidence; and a judgment can only be set aside on the basis that the judge failed to give the evidence a balanced consideration only if the judge's conclusion was rationally insupportable. The grounds in this respect are vague and amount to little more than an assertion that the judge omitted consideration of the appellant’s evidence and that his findings were not balanced or measured. They come nowhere close to establishing that the judge left the appellant’s evidence out of account or that the findings are rationally unsupportable.
32. The rule 25 reply does not significantly clarify matters. It states only that the appellant’s visa was obtained by Umar, that she had explained this in her evidence, and that it was unclear how the judge could in those circumstances reach a balanced conclusion.
33. So far as the complaint is that the judge treated the passport, visa and travel arrangements as evidence of the appellant’s own autonomy without taking account of Umar’s role, it is not made out. The judge recorded at paragraph 32 that “the tutor managed everything for her”. At paragraph 50 he recorded the appellant’s evidence that the tutor had arranged her passport application and that the visa application was made shortly before her arrival in the United Kingdom. At paragraph 89 he again referred to her having obtained her passport “through the tutor”. The judge was plainly aware of and took into account Umar’s role.
Ground 6: delay in claiming asylum
34. Section 8 of the 2004 Act required the judge to take specified conduct into account as potentially damaging to credibility. It did not require him to treat such conduct as determinative or to assign it any particular weight. Credibility still had to be assessed globally: JT (Cameroon) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2008] EWCA Civ 878; [2009] 1 WLR 1411 at [15]-[21].
35. In my judgment the judge followed that approach. He dealt with section 8 at paragraphs 91 to 100, after reaching his principal findings about the account and documents. At paragraph 101 he described the core claim as already fatally damaged ‘for the reasons stated above’. Delay was therefore an additional consideration, not the basis upon which the claim was rejected.
36. There was nevertheless a mistake at paragraph 94. The judge said that the evidence that the appellant approached her solicitors in summer 2021 was inconsistent with her claim that the respondent had been approached to extend her visit visa. She had not in fact claimed that anyone approached the respondent. In her witness statement, the appellant had said that R had told her that the Home Office had extended all visas during the pandemic, and that she thought this had happened to her as well. The judge's summary at paragraph 36 does not record her having given evidence in different terms orally.
37. The mistake was not, however, material. The judge separately considered the length of the delay; the differing accounts of when the appellant learned about asylum and whether solicitors' offices were closed; the limited content and chronology of the attendance note; the suggestion in that note that an asylum claim had been made before the date otherwise agreed by the parties; and the inconsistent evidence about possession of the passport. Those findings were not challenged. More importantly, the section 8 assessment followed numerous independent adverse findings concerning the substance of the protection claim. Correcting paragraph 94 would therefore leave both the remainder of the section 8 assessment and the prior credibility findings intact. In my judgment, this is one of those relatively rare cases where it is possible to say that an error in relation to the assessment of credibility could not, on any rational view, have made any difference to the outcome and is therefore immaterial.
38. Ground six accordingly also fails.
39. In the circumstances, this appeal also falls to be dismissed.

Notice of Decision
The decision of First-tier Tribunal Judge Fox promulgated on 20 April 2026 did not involve the making of any material error of law and shall stand.

Paul Skinner

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

24 September 2026