RH v Secretary of State for the Home Department: asylum appeal succeeds despite negative trafficking referral

A First-tier Tribunal judge has allowed the asylum appeal of an Albanian man found working in a cannabis grow house as a minor, ruling that he was a victim of trafficking notwithstanding a negative "reasonable grounds" decision from the National Referral Mechanism (NRM).

The appellant, referred to as RH under an anonymity direction extending to his family, arrived in the UK as an unaccompanied child after a Channel crossing arranged by people smugglers. His initial asylum claim, made in 2022, centred on a fear of unlicensed money lenders in Albania to whom he owed the equivalent of £3,500, borrowed to fund an arts course he could not otherwise afford. He said the lenders, involved in wider criminal activity, had threatened him with violence and later threatened his family after his departure, prompting them to sever contact with him.

A separate trafficking claim emerged only after RH was arrested in August 2023, aged 18, when police raided a cannabis grow house in the north of England where he had been held and controlled. He said he had been approached in London by an Albanian man who told him he owed a debt and would have to work it off, and that he was then confined, threatened, and made to tend cannabis plants. The NRM had previously found insufficient evidence to conclude he was a trafficking victim, a decision reached, the tribunal noted, without any interview of RH and based on limited information provided during a police interview shortly after his arrest.

Judge Mulready found that the tribunal was not bound by the NRM's assessment, applying the Supreme Court's guidance in MS (Pakistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, and was entitled to reach its own conclusion having heard oral evidence directly from RH, something the NRM decision maker had not done.

Much of the judgement addressed RH's credibility, given significant inconsistencies in his account of the money lenders and a delayed disclosure of the trafficking allegations. RH had asked to be treated as a vulnerable witness under the relevant Joint Presidential Guidance Note, citing memory loss, dissociation and trauma, an application the Home Office did not oppose. The judge accepted that these vulnerabilities, considered alongside guidance in the Equal Treatment Bench Books on the effects of trauma and dissociation on recollection, provided a credible explanation for the inconsistencies rather than undermining his account. The judge was also satisfied by a late-admitted news article, provided during the hearing, reporting the arrest of two individuals matching those RH said had trafficked him, in connection with a murder investigation in Albania.

Applying the country guidance decision in LR (Male VOTs) Albania [2026] UKUT 315 (IAC), the judge found RH exhibited several recognised risk factors for trafficking, including his age at the relevant time, mental health symptoms, absence of family support and northern Albanian origin, and that male victims of trafficking constitute a particular social group in Albania both before and after the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. The judge concluded that RH's particular vulnerabilities meant state protection would likely prove ineffective in practice, and that internal relocation would not be reasonable given that his vulnerabilities and lack of support would persist wherever he settled in the country.

The asylum appeal was allowed on the basis of RH's status as a victim of trafficking. Although the tribunal did not need to determine the separate humanitarian protection claim relating to the money lenders, having already found in RH's favour on asylum grounds, the judge indicated that this claim would also have succeeded had it fallen to be decided. A fee award was made.