[2025] UKUT 215 (AAC)

The sixth ground of appeal concerns the seventh question the PATS had been directed to consider by the directions of 23 April 2023. I did not set out the fifth to seventh questions of those directions in paragraph 8 above. Those questions read:

“5.

Does the appellant have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and/or loss of libido and/or impotence?

6.

If so, is there a reasonable doubt that all or any of those conditions is related to service?

7.

In particular, is there a reasonable doubt that those conditions are caused by (i) exposure to smoke; and/or (ii) the administration of vaccines?”

Having found that the appellant did not have GWI, CFS, or depression and memory loss, the issue of whether these claimed for conditions were caused by service did not arise, and so the question of whether they were caused by smoke exposure in service likewise did not arise. Nor was the administration of vaccines in issue on this appeal at all, as it remains to be decided on the other appeal which has been sisted.

The appellant’s argument in his Notice of Appeal is that the PATS should have limited itself to asking itself the questions at points 3 and 6 in the 23 April 2023 directions. If that is the argument, then the PATS asked (and answered) question 6 in relation to loss of libido, and I have decided that it did not err in law in so doing. On the appellant’s case it ought not to have also asked itself question 7 in relation to loss of libido, but I do not identify any material error of law in its having done so. The PATS’s analysis in paragraph 78 of its decision on the face of it wrapped questions 6 and 7 together and looked at service factors outside of smoke exposure. The directions did not ask the same question(s) in relation to severe muscle and joint pain, but there is no ground of appeal before me concerning that claimed for condition. In any event the PATS also addressed the reasonable doubt issue in relation the muscle and joint pain and whether they were related to service. And the PATS did not answer questions 3 and 4 in relation to GWI, but that is because it decided the appellant did not have GWI, and so those questions did not apply.

This then left an argument, as I understood it, about whether the PATS had been limited by directions (at page 954 of the PATS bundle) not to consider wider service related factors. This seemed a somewhat arid argument. The PATS directed itself on the directions dated 23 April 2023. No error of law challenge was or is made about those directions. On their face those directions only gave smoke exposure as one particular potential service cause (at questions 4 and 7) and did not restrict consideration to service causes more generally (see questions 3 and 6). And, as I have said above, no material error of law arose from the PATS looking at smoke exposure as part of all potential service related causes more generally.