The High Court refused J.U.O.’s application for leave to appeal the earlier dismissal of her challenge to a decision refusing her international protection claim. The application was brought under section 5 of the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Act 2000.
In an earlier judgment, the court had rejected her application for certiorari of the International Protection Appeals Tribunal’s decision. In this judgment, delivered on 21 January 2019, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys considered whether the proposed appeal questions met the test for leave.
The first proposed question concerned whether a decision-maker could find that an applicant had not suffered serious harm based on adverse credibility findings when medical material described injuries as “highly consistent” with her account. The judge said that formulation did not reflect the case argued or the Tribunal’s decision. The pleaded ground had been that the Tribunal failed to give proper probative weight to medical, medico-legal and counselling reports said to raise a rebuttable presumption of past serious harm.
The judge said that a report describing an injury as highly consistent with an account does not, by itself, prevent a decision-maker from finding that serious harm was not established. Unless a report is diagnostic of the account, other explanations may exist. He also noted that the medical evidence had not been rejected, but had been found insufficient to establish the claim.
The second proposed question asked whether a decision-maker must assess past harm and future risk despite adverse credibility findings, based on medical evidence described as undisputed. The judge said decision-makers must assess past harm and future risk as part of their role in considering a protection claim. But he rejected the suggestion that the evidence required a favourable finding simply because some parts of the claim had not been positively rejected.
The judgment also addressed the applicant’s submissions that case law conflicted and that the medical report established that she had suffered harm by someone. The judge said the latter argument had not formed part of the substantive case or the grounds on which leave had been granted. He added that an injury alone did not establish entitlement to international protection and explained that “serious harm” has a specific legal meaning under the 2013 Subsidiary Protection Regulations.
The court concluded that the case raised no point of public importance, let alone exceptional public importance, and said it would not be in the public interest to grant leave even if such a point existed. The application for leave to appeal was refused. The order concerned leave to appeal; the judgment did not determine a new application for international protection.