AC-2025-LON-001896 - [2025] EWHC 2231 (Admin)

The Claimant has applied for permission to rely on expert evidence in the form of two medico-legal reports from Dr Bourdillon-Schicker, a GP working with the charity Medical Justice. That application is opposed by the Defendant, for essentially two reasons. First, that Dr Bourdillon-Schicker, as a GP (rather than a consultant forensic psychiatrist or similar), does not have the expertise to be able to provide expert evidence in this case. Secondly, that Dr Bourdillon-Schicker is not sufficiently impartial, as he works with a charity which is opposed to immigration detention.

In considering this application, I have considered Kennedy v Cordona (Services) LP (Scotland) [2016] UKSC 6, where guidance was provided, at [44], as to the factors to be considered by a court when deciding whether to admit skilled evidence. The starting point is, of course, to understand the purpose for which the proposed expert evidence would be relied upon, and precisely what issues it opines upon. As I clarified with Ms Besso, the Claimant is seeking to rely on the reports from Dr Bourdillon-Schicker to support the Claimant’s case, not only that he was suffering from schizophrenia (as he clearly was), but that his mental health was worsened, or was likely to be worsened, by his remaining in detention.

I am not persuaded that Dr Bourdillon-Schicker’s reports should be admitted. In my view, although he has some experience of providing mental healthcare as a GP, he does not have the specialist knowledge or experience necessary to be able to provide expert opinion evidence as to whether detention is likely to have been, or to be, causative of worsening of the Claimant’s mental health. Such an assessment would necessarily involve considering what the Claimant’s mental health would have been in the counterfactual situation in which he was not detained. In my view, if expert evidence on that matter is required later in these proceedings (i.e. for the purposes of a substantive hearing), then such evidence should come from an independent expert whose instruction has been pre-approved by the Court, and the expert should be a consultant psychiatrist or similar.

I emphasise that I do not in any way doubt his professional independence, albeit that, if the Court were being asked to approve the appointment of an expert under CPR Part 35, it might be desirable to appoint someone who was not working in an NGO which might conceivably be seen as ‘pro-detainee’.

My refusal of the Claimant’s application for Dr Bourdillon-Schicker’s medico-legal reports to be admitted as expert evidence does not prevent the Claimant from relying on the fact of that doctor’s letters and other communications to the Defendant which raised concerns about the Claimant’s mental state or the effects that continuing detention might be having on him. It is open to the Claimant to rely – as he has done at this hearing – on the various medical notes and records, from Dr Bourdillon-Schicker and other medically qualified people who have come into contact with the Claimant – which have been available to the Defendant. The lawfulness of the Defendant’s treatment of the Claimant can, in my view, be assessed on the basis of the information that was available to her at the relevant times, which will have included medical records and notes, as well as any letters or representations from Medical Justice or individual medical practitioners.