The High Court has quashed a decision refusing an anonymised Malawian applicant international protection, finding that the appeals tribunal did not properly consider a key medico-legal report.
In a judgment delivered on 29 July 2019, Mr Justice Max Barrett ordered certiorari and remitted the matter to the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT) for fresh consideration. The court did not decide whether the applicant should receive refugee or subsidiary protection status.
The case concerned the IPAT’s decision of 21 May 2018, which affirmed the International Protection Officer’s recommendation that the applicant receive neither form of protection. At the High Court hearing, the applicant’s principal challenge concerned a report prepared by the Spiritan Asylum Services Initiative, known as Spirasi.
The judge identified three problems with the tribunal’s treatment of the report. First, the IPAT had treated the report author’s qualified psychological assessments as reducing their weight. The court said the author’s comment that he “would have expected much higher negative scoring” was intended to support the applicant’s account of his condition: the applicant appeared to be in a worse state than his scores indicated. The tribunal had mistakenly understood the comment to his detriment, the judge said.
Second, the court said the tribunal unreasonably used the qualified psychological assessment to discount findings associated with the Istanbul Protocol. The judgment noted that the Protocol’s “consistent/highly consistent” rating relates to physical symptoms, including lesions and their overall pattern.
Third, the judge said the tribunal appeared to expect the report to determine the cause of the applicant’s presentation. That expectation was inconsistent with prior case law, under which a medico-legal report of this kind cannot prove the truth of an applicant’s account of events.
The applicant also challenged the tribunal’s treatment of police reports, his date of marriage, differing explanations for selling land, and its handling of perceived inconsistencies at the hearing. The court rejected those grounds. It said the applicant was asking the court to reweigh evidence, which would intrude on the tribunal’s role, and that the tribunal could reasonably find the explanations for the land sale inconsistent. The judge also found that the applicant had received a full and fair hearing.
Despite noting that the application contained many inconsistencies, the court held that the errors in the treatment of the Spirasi report were significant enough to require the decision to be quashed and reconsidered.