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Ground 2A: Discrimination with respect to housing benefit claimants
Ground 2A: Discrimination with respect to housing benefit claimants
The first issue is whether the Housing Benefit Regulations would have permitted the Appellant’s housing costs entitlement to continue, which analysis is set out above.
If so, does the difference in treatment result in unlawful discrimination to UC claimants (those who are left with no choice but to claim UC by reason of age, relationship status or their type of accommodation)?
Here, the Appellant relies (under Stevenson in particular) on a much narrower status as (then) a working-age person in settled accommodation. As a result, he could only claim UC for housing costs support.
He would plead differential treatment in respect of either claimants who have attained qualifying age for state pension credit, or alternatively homeless persons or persons in supported accommodation. This alleged differential treatment does not involve a suspect ground, and therefore the standard of justification is “manifestly without reasonable foundation”.
The Appellant acknowledges the decision of this tribunal in RJ v HMRC; HMRC v RJ [2021] UKUT 40 (AAC) at [106] on the differential treatment under replacement benefit systems.
He submits that RJ should be distinguished because UC (particularly the housing costs element) is not a replacement for housing benefit. They continue to exist side by side and will continue to do so. The structure of the absence abroad provisions results in differential (and it is submitted unjustified) treatment.
Regulation 6A of the Universal Credit (Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2014 “(“the UC (TP) Regulations 2014”) carves out specific circumstances for which there is no end to housing benefit entitlement, notwithstanding the roll-out of UC.
Tax credits, while extant and the time of RJ and until recently, were to be abolished, not qualified. The groups who remain able to claim are considerable: all pension age people without a partner under such age (that is, any pensioner other than a member of a mixed age couple), who would otherwise meet the conditions for housing benefit, plus those in exempt accommodation. Only housing benefit could survive managed migration under Part 4 of the UC (TP) Regulations 2014.
- Heading
- Section 1
- The Statutory Framework
- The Background Facts
- The Decision of the Tribunal
- Ground 1: The Tribunal erred in its treatment of regulation 11(3)(a)(i) of the 2013 Regulations in requiring the need for medical treatment to predate a claimant’s departure from Great Britain
- Ground 1: Interpretation of the 2013 Regulations
- The absence is in connection with the death of a close family member and The Secretary of State considers it unreasonable to expect the claimant to return within one month
- A claimant who does fall within those paragraphs will have retain entitlement in assessment period 2
- The Secretary of State (or the Tribunal) may extend time by up to a further month
- Ground 2: Interference with Convention rights
- Status
- Difference in treatment
- Justification
- This is likely to be a relatively small cohort These are not concerns unique to a need for treatment postdating a claimant’s departure from Great Britain. Decision makers already need to make evaluative judgements on issues of intention to return
- Remedy
- Ground 2A: Discrimination with respect to housing benefit claimants
- Justification
- Why the Upper Tribunal is invited to grant permission: factors other than merits
- Ground 3: the Secretary of State’s concession as to the amount of overpayment
- Ground 3: assessment period beginning 24 February 2023 . The Secretary of State invited the Upper Tribunal to the appeal in part on an additional ground not raised by the Appellant. The Appellant’s ab
- Ground 1: even if the Appellant’s absence from 30 March 2023 to 23 April 2023 was solely in connection with qualifying treatment, that absence cannot be disregarded under regulation 11(3)(a)(i). The n
- Ground 2: the Appellant alleges that the one month rule in regulation 11(1)(b) discriminates indirectly against him Appellant as a disabled person in breach of Article 14 read with A1P1. There is insu
- Temporary absence
- qualifying convalescence: regulation 11(3)(a)(i) and (ii)
- Submissions Regulation 11(1)(b): assessment period beginning 24 February 2023
- Ground 1: interpretation of regulation 11(3)(a)(i)
- Ground 2: regulation 11(1)(b) and Article 14 ECHR
- No evidential basis for finding of indirect discrimination
- Justification
- A rule of this kind would necessarily expand the cohort of claimants who may retain
- Remedy
- Ground 2A: differences in Housing Benefit and UC rules and Article 14 ECHR
- Conclusion
- The Appellant and his wife were not entitled to UC from 24 March 2023 to 23 April 2023
- Analysis
- Ground 2A
- Ground 1
- Ground 2
- Justification
- Remedy
- Conclusions