Treatment of Claimants Section 8: Claimant’s credibility
37.Section 8 sets out various behaviours which a deciding authority is required to take account of (as being damaging to credibility) when deciding whether to believe a statement made by or on behalf of a person making an asylum or human rights claim. A “deciding authority” is an immigration officer, the Secretary of State, the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (or an adjudicator and the Immigration Appeal Tribunal until such time as the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal is established) and the Special Immigration Appeals Commission.
38.Subsection (2) provides that behaviour which a deciding authority thinks:
is behaviour which damages the claimant’s credibility and should be taken into account when determining whether to believe a statement made by a person who makes an asylum or human rights claim.
39.Subsection (3) provides that various behaviours relating to the non production of passports (without reasonable explanation), the production of false passports as if they were valid, and the failure to answer questions (without reasonable explanation), will be treated as behaviours which damage credibility.
40.Subsection (4) similarly provides that a person’s failure to take a reasonable opportunity to make an asylum or human right claim whilst in a safe third country will be treated as behaviour that damages his credibility. For the purposes of this section a “safe country” means a country to which Part 2 of Schedule 3 applies.
41.Subsections (5) and (6) provide that it is also behaviour which damages credibility where a person makes an asylum or human rights claim only after they have been notified of an immigration decision or extradition proceedings and that claim does not rely wholly on matters arising after the notification; or where the claim is made after a person has been arrested under an immigration provision and there was a reasonable opportunity to make the claim before arrest and the claim does not rely wholly on matters arising after the arrest. Subsection (7) sets out the meaning of an “immigration decision” and an “immigration provision”.
42.Subsection (12) provides that section 8 does not prevent a deciding authority from determining not to believe a statement on the grounds of behaviour to which the section does not apply.