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THE REFUGEE Appeals Tribunal is at the centre of controversy again. It has emerged that three of its most senior members were preparing to challenge in court a statement made by its chairman to the Supreme Court.

This arose in the context of a court case alleging bias against one tribunal member, James Nicholson, who resigned late last year when the action against him was settled before it could go to a full hearing. In the Supreme Court judgment requiring the production of statistics, Mrs Justice Susan Denham found that a statement of the chairman of the tribunal, John Ryan, was unsupported by any evidence. The full hearing, had it gone ahead, would have entailed an examination of the record of Mr Nicholson in deciding close to 1,000 appeals, almost all of which he is reported to have rejected. It would have entailed also looking at statistics on the decisions of other tribunal members and examining the basis on which cases are allocated to members by the chairman, Mr Ryan.