[2025] UKUT 215 (AAC)

I approach the fourth and fifth grounds of appeal with some circumspection because Mr Haddow accepted before me that if I was to decide against the appellant on the GWI grounds of appeal, as I have, the fourth and fifth grounds of appeal were not separate material errors of law grounds. Given this, I will address them somewhat briefly.

I also bear in mind in relation to these grounds, and the sixth ground of appeal, the appellant’s stance that the individual symptoms he claimed were (only) relevant to deciding whether he had GWI. If that remained his position, and given I have found the PATS was entitled to find the appellant did not have GWI (as there is no such organic disease), the relevance of these grounds may at least be questionable.

The appellant uses the term ‘cognitive difficulties’ to cover memory loss and depression. He argued that the PATS’s reasoning was not adequate to explain why it had found he did not suffer from depression or memory loss. The key to appellant’s argument is paragraph 55 of the PATS’s decision, in which it found that in 2009 the appellant’s GP noted that there was no record of depression or memory loss. It is said that what was found in paragraph 55 also applied to loss of libido, but the PATS did accept the appellant as having loss of libido. It is argued that this was contradictory and needed further explanation. The short answer to this is that the PATS’s finding that the appellant had loss of libido was not just based on the medical records (see paragraph 65 of the PATS’s decision). In any event, the premise for this argument is not sound as the PATS found that the loss of libido (i.e., the lack of sex drive) was evidenced in the GP records and the investigation at the urology department (see again paragraph 65 of the PATS’s decision). Given this, in my judgement the reasons the PATS gave at paragraphs 55, 56 and 68 adequately explained why it did not accept the appellant had memory loss or depression. Even if this was not the case, no material error of law would have arisen given the appellant’s acceptance before the PATS that he could not raise a reasonable doubt that any depression and memory loss had been caused by a war injury or war risk injury.

The fifth ground of appeal is about loss of libido and impotence and is really an argument about causation. The PATS accepted that the appellant had the physical injuries of loss of libido and impotence. However, as set out in paragraph 20 above, it concluded that there was a clear alternative cause for these set out in Dr Shennan’s letter, which had nothing to do with service and related to the appellant having had cervical surgery in 1995. Moreover, given the appellant had not had any acute symptoms in relation to any of the claimed stressors (such as smoke exposure) in service (see further paragraph 20 of the PATS’s decision), there was no plausible explanation of how those stressors could have caused the loss of libido and impotence many years later. As such, the PATS found there was no reasonable doubt that the loss of libido and impotence were attributable to service.

The appellant argues that in coming to this conclusion the PATS left out of account evidence that would have passed the reasonable doubt threshold and that in consequence the reasoning of the PATS did not add up. There is no merit in my judgement in this argument. The reasoning of the PATS is clear in paragraph 78: the obvious cause was the cervical surgery in 1995 and nothing in the appellant’s service raised a reasonable doubt against this.