[2025] UKUT 026 (AAC)

Given the well-established principle that, in a social security appeal, the FTT stands in the shoes of the decision maker and has the power to consider any issue and make any decision the decision maker could have made (see, for example, R(IB) 2/04), it seems to me, on the plain meaning of the regulation, that the FTT’s decision on Mr W’s PIP appeal was a decision on appeal awarding a qualifying benefit. I italicise the word “awarding” only because that is the only word whose meaning, on the facts of this appeal, might be in doubt: the FTT’s decision was clearly on appeal, and the daily living component of PIP, at the enhanced rate, was clearly a qualifying benefit.

There is an argument that the FTT decision in question did not award the daily living component of PIP, because the Respondent’s decision (being appealed) had awarded that “already”. Another way of putting this argument is that the daily living component of PIP is not the part of the Respondent’s decision that Mr W was appealing against (he was appealing against the mobility component part of that decision). However, this argument seems to me incorrect, given that the FTT, on appeal, had the power to make whatever decision on the daily living component of FTT it thought fit (including not awarding it at all). It follows that the FTT decision did award the daily living component of PIP.

Mr Skinner, for the Respondent, sought to bolster the argument by submitting that the regulation should be read as referring to the “first” award of the qualifying benefit to the disabled person; he submitted that such a reading was necessary as, without it, the 3-month “clock” (as regards “backdating”) would restart on the claimant making a carer’s allowance claim, whenever a decision was made on appeal awarding the qualifying benefit. In my view, the rules of statutory interpretation do not permit interpolating this “first time” concept into the regulation: the plain meaning of the words used is clear, and the “clock restarting” consequence does not seem to me an ”absurdity” which could merit a departure of this kind from what the regulation actually says. Indeed, once it is understood that the FTT fully steps into the Respondent’s shoes and makes a new decision, it would seem logical, rather than absurd, that, following a decision on appeal, the carer’s allowance claimant is back to the same position they were in when the Respondent made the initial decision on their claim.