IA269272013

For the Appellant: Miss N M Hashmi, instructed by Immigration Practitioners Service

The appellant is a national of Uganda. He appealed to the First-tier Tribunal against the decision of the respondent on 6 August 2013, refusing him leave to remain. The appellant came to the United Kingdom lawfully but the relationship upon which his admission was based has since broken up. It is now accepted on his behalf, as we understand it, that he cannot meet the requirements of the Immigration Rules but his claim is based on a same sex relationship in which it is said he has been engaged since March 2012.

�Arguably the evidence of what people told the Chief Immigration Officer should not have been received as evidence of the truthfulness of what they said. It is clearly hearsay and, save where statute says otherwise is not evidence of the truthfulness of what was said. The Chief Immigration Officer might have been talking to people who bore a grudge against the appellant, or who lied because they did not trust the officer or who were not in a position to know who lived in the house. Arguably the First-tier Tribunal judge should not have found such evidence to be �highly damaging�.�

In addition, the judge noted the evidence from the appellant and his claimed partner about their relationship and the sort of things that they do together, and as he concluded, that that evidence was inconsistent and indeed patchy, generalised and lacking in persuasive detail.

It is, in our judgment, fair to say, as Miss Hashmi has said, that more could have been made by the judge of the details of the evidence before him: but in total it does not appear to us that the judge�s approach to the evidence was unfair, insufficient or unlawful. What he had was evidence from the two people who mattered most in the claimed relationship, which did not begin to show him that the relationship was a genuine one; and other evidence which helped to confirm him in that view.