AC-2025-LON-001440 - [2025] EWHC 2472 (Admin)

Ground 3 asserts irrationality in the treatment of the evidence of NAR. I am in no doubt that this ground is made out. The case worker baldly asserts that “The witness statement of [NAR] who states that the Applicant worked with the British Government, is uncorroborated and does not support his claim.”

Understandably, the grounds of claim describe this finding as “extraordinary”. The case worker seems not to have understood that the statement of NAR was itself corroboration of the claimant’s witness statements and other evidence. NAR’s statement did not itself need to be corroborated. Plainly, NAR’s statement did “support” the claimant’s application. I refer to what I have said above. Lord Murray sought to rely upon an earlier passage of the case worker document, where the claimant’s solicitors are recorded as saying they could not see any proper basis for distinguishing NAR’s case from the claimant’s. Lord Murray submitted that this shows the evidence of NAR was properly considered. I do not find it does anything of the kind. If anything, it aggravates the treatment of NAR’s evidence in the body of the case worker’s decision.

I accept that the FCDO assessment informed the defendant’s decision and that that assessment addressed what were said to be factual differences between the respective positions of NAR and the claimant. Despite Ms Ferguson’s assertion to the contrary (at paragraph 13 of her statement), those differences do not, however, find any expression in the case worker’s reasoning. In any event, the differences identified relate to the dates when NAR was working as a judge of the ATC (up to 2021) and that NAR was known to the BEK Team. As I have sought to explain above, those are not, upon analysis of the evidence, rational points of difference.

Ground 3 accordingly succeeds.