JM (Rwanda) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

In an asylum appeal, credibility is for the tribunal, not medical or country experts. An expert’s assessment of risk may depend on accepting the claimant’s alleged profile and history; it cannot substitute for the tribunal’s assessment of whether that account is credible. A tribunal may rely on the absence of prompt medical attention after an allegation of very recent, serious injury, even where later medical evidence records scars and the delay in obtaining a report is attributed to solicitors. Where the tribunal gives clear and cogent reasons for rejecting the account, and its findings are neither perverse nor unreasonable, a renewed application for permission to appeal discloses no arguable basis.

The appellant, a Rwandan national, arrived in the United Kingdom in August 2000 and claimed asylum. The Secretary of State refused her asylum and human-rights claims in February 2004. An adjudicator dismissed her appeal in July 2004, and leave to appeal was granted.

The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, following a second-stage hearing, dismissed the appeal and found the appellant’s evidence not credible. Three grounds remained. They challenged the Tribunal’s treatment of medical and expert evidence and its credibility findings. After permission was refused on paper by Buxton LJ, the appellant renewed her application before the Court of Appeal. The central issue was whether the Tribunal’s credibility assessment disclosed an arguable error of law, perversity or unreasonableness.

1. Application refused. The renewed application for permission to appeal was dismissed. The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal had given clear and cogent reasons, including nine identified reasons, for rejecting the appellant’s account.
2. The Tribunal was entitled to treat the absence of any prompt medical consultation or hospital attendance as significant. The allegation was that the appellant had been seriously beaten only 11 days before arriving in the United Kingdom. The later discovery of old scars, and the asserted failure of solicitors to obtain a medical report earlier, did not answer the Tribunal’s point that serious injuries would ordinarily have been apparent and might reasonably have led to immediate medical attention.
3. Credibility was a matter for the Tribunal. The medical and country-expert reports could not determine whether the appellant’s account was credible. The Tribunal was not required to analyse the expert evidence in detail where the expert’s assessment of risk depended substantially on the appellant having the profile and history she alleged, and the Tribunal had rejected effectively every material part of that account.
4. The Tribunal had considered Dr Eltringham’s report insofar as it bore on credibility. Its findings were clearly set out and were not perverse or unreasonable. The criticisms advanced on the appellant’s behalf therefore disclosed no arguable ground for appellate intervention.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): After an earlier refusal of permission on paper by Buxton LJ, the renewed application was refused by Lord Justice Gage on 19 February 2007.
• Asylum and Immigration Tribunal: Following the earlier adjudicator’s decision and a second-stage hearing, the Tribunal promulgated its decision on 10 February 2006 and rejected the appellant’s evidence as not credible. The decision is identified as [AIT No. HX/04692/2004].
• Adjudicator: The appellant’s appeal was rejected on 2 July 2004, after the Secretary of State had refused her asylum and human-rights claims.