The High Court has dismissed applications by two anonymised applicants from Ukraine for leave to appeal decisions refusing them subsidiary protection. Mr Justice Richard Humphreys delivered the judgment on 3 December 2018.
The applications followed an earlier judgment in which the court refused certiorari in respect of International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT) decisions concerning the applicants. The judge considered three proposed questions said to be of exceptional public importance and concluded that none justified leave to appeal.
The first concerned how a decision-maker should assess a medico-legal report alongside an applicant’s credibility. The judge said the report had not been disregarded: it had been considered and found insufficient. He held that the evidence must be assessed as a whole, and that a decision-maker could not assess a report separately from the applicant’s credibility before considering the full case. He also rejected the applicants’ claim that the earlier judgment revealed a conflict in the case law.
The second proposed question concerned whether a change of regime, and the failure to hold all past perpetrators accountable, could establish a lack of state protection. The judge said the applicants had not demonstrated a forward-looking risk of serious harm specific to them. He considered the proposed question fact-specific and said the applicants’ submissions also relied on a version of the argument that differed from what had been pleaded.
The third question concerned adverse credibility findings linked to the wife’s failure to seek medical or psychological assistance after an allegation of rape. The judge said the issue was fact-specific and did not raise a question of law of exceptional public importance. He noted that the tribunal’s decision included other adverse credibility findings and a separate ground for refusal. Any assessment of future risk, he said, had to be based on facts accepted by the tribunal, not parts of an account it rejected.
The judge added that the tribunal’s decision rested on two separate and independent grounds. The applicants had not shown sufficient grounds for appeal on either, and an appeal would be futile even if one proposed point had met the required threshold. The court dismissed both applications for leave to appeal. The order did not determine a new application for subsidiary protection.