Proving Torture, Demanding the Impossible: Home Office mistreatment of expert medical evidence

This research examines in detail 50 asylum claims that have been refused by asylum caseworkers at the initial decision stage, to gain a better understanding of how medico-legal reports produced by Freedom from Torture’s Medico-Legal Report Service have been treated since the policy instruction was issued in 2014. The evidence set out in this report demonstrates that serious deficiencies in the treatment of medico -legal reports by asylum caseworkers persist, and that internal processes of scrutiny and quality control at the Home Office do not correct these errors at the initial decision stage.