The High Court has set aside an International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT) decision rejecting an applicant’s appeal and remitted the case to the tribunal for fresh consideration, following a preliminary ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
In a judgment delivered on 14 June 2024, Mr Justice Max Barrett found that IPAT had breached its duty to cooperate with the applicant by failing to obtain up-to-date information about conditions in his country of origin when it made its decision. The applicant is anonymised as X in the judgment.
The CJEU had ruled that the cooperation duty requires the determining authority to obtain current information about relevant conditions in an applicant’s country of origin. It also requires a medico-legal report on mental health where there is evidence of potentially trauma-related problems and the report is necessary or relevant to assessing the need for protection, subject to the fundamental rights protections specified by the CJEU.
The High Court considered whether the failure to cooperate required the IPAT decision to be set aside automatically. The CJEU said it did not necessarily do so, and that an applicant could be required to show the decision might have been different had the duty been met. Justice Barrett said that was a low threshold. He considered public material about Pakistan published by the US State Department, the European Asylum Support Office, Freedom House and Human Rights Watch, and concluded that the IPAT might have reached a different decision had that information been before it.
The judge also considered delay. The judgment describes a period of three years and seven months between the application and the appeal decision as unreasonable in the circumstances. The CJEU had said legislative amendments could not justify the elapsed time, but delay alone could not justify setting aside a decision without evidence that it affected the dispute’s outcome. Justice Barrett accepted the applicant’s submission that the timing of the decision and its reliance on country information published in 2017 supported a conclusion that the delay affected the outcome.
On credibility, the CJEU had ruled that a false statement in an initial protection application, if explained and withdrawn at the first opportunity, could not by itself prevent an applicant’s general credibility from being established. The High Court noted that IPAT had referred to the withdrawn statement, an omission concerning a bomb blast at a funeral and the applicant’s failure to seek asylum in the UK. The judge said these factors appeared interlinked and that the credibility issues had not been addressed adequately in the manner contemplated by the CJEU, particularly in relation to cooperation.
The order sets aside IPAT’s decision of 7 February 2019 and remits the matter for fresh consideration. The High Court did not itself determine the applicant’s entitlement to international protection.