PC (Sri Lanka) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

JurisdictionEngland & Wales
JudgeLord Justice Fulford
Judgment Date16 May 2014
Neutral Citation[2014] EWCA Civ 788
CourtCourt of Appeal (Civil Division)
Docket NumberCase No: C5/2013/3287
Date16 May 2014

[2014] EWCA Civ 788

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)

ON APPEAL FROM THE UPPER TRIBUNAL

(IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER)

Royal Courts of Justice

Strand

London, WC2A 2LL

Before:

Lord Justice Fulford

Case No: C5/2013/3287

PC (Sri Lanka)
Applicant/Appellant
and
Secretary of State for the Home Department
Respondent/Respondent

Ms Sara Anzani (instructed by Duraisingam Solicitors) appeared on behalf of the Applicant

Lord Justice Fulford
1

Given I am going to grant permission in what is a second appeal, I consider it necessary to set out in a little detail my reasons for so doing. The applicant seeks permission to appeal the decision of Upper Tribunal Judge Juss of 11 September 2013 which dismissed his appeal against decisions to refuse to grant him asylum. The applicant is a Sri Lankan national of Tamil ethnicity.

2

The first ground of appeal is that Judge Juss failed to engage adequately or at all with the substance of the challenge that was being advanced before him, namely that First-tier Tribunal Judge Oliver had failed to take account of material evidence in reaching his credibility findings. It is suggested that Judge Juss erred in ruling that aspects of the applicant's evidence were immaterial to the outcome of the appeal.

3

The applicant advanced the following main points against the background that he alleged that he had been not only detained and mistreated but that he, his father and his cousin had had involvement with the LTTE. The applicant relied on his involvement in anti-government demonstrations in 2001; events in 2006 which led to the arrest of his cousin; his father's membership of the LTTE's political wing and his disappearance in 1994; and the applicant's involvement in the LTTE by providing food during the ceasefire and digging bunkers after June 2007. It is emphasised that Judge Oliver did not make any discrete findings of fact as regards these aspects of the claim.

4

I accept that all of these matters were potentially of considerable significance when assessing the risk upon return to Sri Lanka. However, I agree with Sir Stephen Sedley's observation when declining to grant permission that:

"There was no logical flaw in the FTT's declining to evaluate the evidence referred to in ground 1 beyond finding that [the applicant's] word was not credible, since the father's disappearance and his and [the applicant's] LTTE involvement depended solely on [the applicant's] word. His immigration history was very much against him on that score."

I add that the FTT judge set out the contents of the refusal letter, and in this context he referred to inconsistencies in the applicant's account as regards the court summons and vagueness in his account relating to the position of his father.

5

The judge stressed the history as regards his first claim for asylum and the effect this had on his credibility. The First-tier Tribunal judge set out a comprehensive account of the applicant's evidence during the hearing. His core findings as regards the applicant's narrative was that his failure to claim asylum on arrival, and until his four applications for an extension of a student visa had been refused, fundamentally undermined his credibility. Largely on this basis, the judge decided that essential details in support of his claim had been fabricated. Thereafter, Judge Juss refused the appeal on the basis of the findings reached by Judge Oliver, the evidence before him and the relevant country guidance. He stressed Judge Oliver's assessment of the applicant's credibility and decided that the additional events relied on by the applicant were immaterial given he had disbelieved the applicant comprehensively. Although it would have been preferable if the particular factors I have summarised had been directly addressed by Judge Oliver, there is no free-standing ground of appeal that can be advanced sustainably under ground 1.

6

As indicated by Sir Stephen Sedley, grounds 2 and 3 are more problematic. As to ground 2, Judge Juss accepted that Judge Oliver erred by failing to cite and apply the country guidance case law of LP and TK. However, Judge Juss did not engage thereafter with the applicant's further ground of challenge, namely that Judge Oliver's credibility findings were fundamentally flawed by his failure properly to consider the country guidance case law and the relevant wider background evidence and he failed to apply this material to the facts of the applicant's case. As Sir Stephen observed, the country guidance material was capable arguably of shedding different light on the applicant's credibility, which in turn could have had an impact on whether...

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