[2025] UKUT 035 (AAC)

as the Court of Appeal explained in TD at [54]

“ ... it is also well established that the fact that an issue has been considered by a decision-maker is relevant to the question which the court itself has to determine. It may affect the weight which the court should give to the views of the decision-maker when coming to its own assessment of the issue of justification. This is the point to which the Judge made reference at para. 65 of her judgment, where she quoted Lord Kerr JSC in Re Brewster [2017] UKSC 8; [2017] 1 WLR 519, at para. 64. That passage included the following:

“Where a conscious, deliberate decision by a government department is taken on the distribution of finite resources, the need for restraint on the part of a reviewing court is both obvious and principled. Decisions on social and economic policy are par excellence the stuff of government. But where the question of the impact of a particular measure on social and economic matters has not been addressed by the government department responsible for a particular policy choice, the imperative for reticence on the part of a court tasked with the duty of reviewing the decision is diminished.”

In short, approaching the matter in terms of the Bank Mellatv HM Treasury (No 2) test ([2013] UKSC 39), it is important to have in mind the narrow nature of the differential treatment in issue (just as in TP2), albeit of very great importance to MJ and others in the like position. I am not satisfied on the material before me that the broad aims of promoting phased transition, curtailing public expenditure or administrative efficiency required the complete erosion of transitional relief against the loss in the case of a carer who is in receipt of UC, but whose health conditions subsequently worsen.

Quite apart from that, I reach the firm conclusion that a fair balance has not been struck between the severity of the effects of the measure under challenge upon MJ and those in her situation and the contribution which that measure makes to the achievement of the Secretary of State’s aims, a fortiori where there is no rational connection between the triggering event, the decline in the health of the claimant, and any rational assessment of why it is that that fact should result in a reduction in her benefits by a significant amount.

I am also therefore satisfied that there was no objective and reasonable justification for the difference in treatment between MJ as claimant in this case and the comparators on which she relies.