Ahmed, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

Further submissions amount to a fresh asylum or human rights claim only where they are significantly different from material previously considered. They must contain material not already considered and, taken with the earlier material, create a realistic prospect of success on appeal. On judicial review, the court must apply anxious scrutiny to whether the Secretary of State asked the correct question and reached a rational conclusion. Material relied upon must be sufficiently particularised and reliable to support that realistic prospect. An unexplained document of uncertain provenance, or assertions supported only by an inadequately particularised letter, may properly be given little weight.

The claimant, a Pakistani Ahmadi, challenged the defendant’s refusal to treat further submissions as a fresh asylum and human rights claim. His earlier asylum and human rights appeals had been dismissed. The further submissions relied on a First-Information Report concerning a blasphemy allegation against family members, and assertions that relatives had obtained refugee status in the United Kingdom and China.

The claimant alleged that the defendant had acted irrationally by relying on earlier credibility findings and by giving inadequate weight to the new material. The issue was whether the decision-maker had lawfully applied paragraph 352 of the Immigration Rules and whether the further material created a realistic prospect of success on appeal.

1. Application dismissed. The further submissions did not create a realistic prospect of success on appeal.
2. Paragraph 352 of the Immigration Rules HC 395, as amended by HC 112, requires further submissions to be significantly different from material previously considered. They qualify only if their content has not already been considered and, taken together with the previous material, creates a realistic prospect of success notwithstanding the earlier rejection.
3. Applying WM (DRC) v Secretary of State for the Home Department and Secretary of State for the Home Department v AR (Afghanistan) [2006] EWCA Civ 1495, judicial review required anxious scrutiny of whether the Secretary of State had asked the correct question and had reached a rational decision. The relevant question was whether there was a realistic prospect of success on appeal.
4. The First-Information Report was not sufficiently identified or authenticated. Its provenance had not been properly evidenced, and the explanation that it had been obtained by the claimant’s wife in Pakistan was inadequate. In any event, the report evidenced a complaint, rather than conduct sufficient by itself to establish an asylum claim. It therefore did not, standing alone, establish a realistic prospect of success.
5. The assertions that the claimant’s sister’s family had been recognised as refugees in the United Kingdom and that his cousin and nephew had obtained refugee status in China were not supported by sufficiently particularised and reliable evidence. A single letter from the Muslim Association did not establish those matters with the necessary reliability.
6. The defendant was therefore entitled to conclude that the material, considered together with the earlier evidence, did not satisfy paragraph 352. The judicial review claim was dismissed. Costs were to be dealt with in the usual terms, including detailed assessment as appropriate.

The judgment records that the claimant’s original asylum and human rights claim was dismissed by an adjudicator on 5 February 2004, and that the Immigration Appeal Tribunal dismissed his appeal on 17 December 2004. The present proceedings were a first-instance judicial review of the subsequent refusal to treat further submissions as a fresh claim.