The High Court quashed a decision by the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT) refusing an Albanian man’s appeal in an international protection case, after finding that the tribunal had misunderstood what had been agreed about a pending medico-legal report and had dismissed its potential value without seeing it.
In a judgment delivered on 14 November 2019, Mr Justice Max Barrett said the tribunal’s decision of 11 February 2019 was based on a mistaken understanding of the exchanges after the man’s appeal hearing. The man, identified as B, had sought time for a SPIRASI report concerning two scars on his head, which he said resulted from an assault by a criminal gang in Albania.
At the December 2018 hearing, the tribunal had indicated there should be an update by the first week of January. B’s solicitor later said she would provide an update on her return from leave, after 10 January. The tribunal replied that it looked forward to receiving the report in January. The judge said the agreed update concerned when the report would be available, not delivery of the report itself by the end of that month.
The tribunal’s refusal said it had given B a number of weeks to submit the report and that the report could not establish who caused his injuries or in what circumstances. The High Court said that account was incorrect: the tribunal had sought an update, and it had pre-empted evidence by rejecting the report’s possible value without seeing it. The judge noted the tribunal’s own guidance recognised that medico-legal evidence could help assess whether injuries were consistent with an asserted history of ill-treatment.
The court also rejected the description of the delay as “some months” after the tribunal’s stated expectation of the report by the end of January. On that calculation, the delay was about 11 calendar days, or seven working days. The judge said it was not a case of endless indulgence and observed that the report could be commissioned again.
B’s counsel also challenged other aspects of the tribunal’s reasoning. The judge considered an observation about the timing of extortion unreasonable and possibly irrational, but said it was not central to the refusal. He did not find the tribunal’s view of the protection available from Albanian authorities irrational.
The judge acknowledged that B’s solicitor had failed to provide an update before the end of January, but held that this did not prevent the challenge from succeeding. He granted the orders sought at items (a) and (b) of B’s notice of motion. The judgment said the court would hear the parties briefly on whether a further order, item (d), was necessary. It did not determine the underlying protection appeal.