Upper Tribunal Administrative Appeals Chamber

[2024] UKUT 191 (AAC)

Fecha: 20-Jun-2024

The Respondent’s response

The Respondent’s response

33.

Mr Hays, for the Secretary of State, argued that the appeal invited consideration of an immaterial question, namely whether certain therapy that the Appellant had undergone counted as “formal psychological treatment”. His core submission was that the Tribunal’s decision did not depend on the answer to that question at all. Rather, as he put it in his skeleton argument (at paragraph 16):

The FTT’s central reasoning had nothing to do with whether or not CBT is a “formal” type of psychological treatment. In paragraph 55 of its judgment, the FTT identified the treatment which remained for the Appellant to complete, as recommended by Dr Cahill, and that if the right doctor could be found there may be an improvement in the Appellant’s condition. It was that consideration which led the FTT to conclude (Judgment, 56) that the condition was not permanent. None of this reasoning is affected by the question of whether or not CBT is properly to be defined as “formal psychological treatment”.

34.

The Respondent therefore argues that the Appellant’s focus on the expression “formal psychological treatment” is entirely misplaced. It is immaterial because the Tribunal’s conclusion was based on the psychological therapy that remained to be done, and did not depend on the adjective used to describe the therapy or other treatment that the Appellant had already completed.