Tag: GLD

Mackereth v Department for Work and Pensions & Anor

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EAT, Eady J, Mr D Bleiman and Mr D G Smith, [2022] EAT 99, 29 June 2022

The claimant, a doctor and former full-time evangelist, was engaged as a health and disabilities assessor (DAD) by the second defendant which provided services for the DWP. The role involved assessing individuals who applied for disability-related benefits, including in face-to-face interviews. Whereas the DWP’s policy was to refer to transgender people by their preferred names and titles, the claimant promptly objected to speaking to or about people other than in terms consist with their sex registered at birth. He was dismissed after a month and complained that he had been subject to harassment, direct and indirect discrimination because of his religious and/or philosophical beliefs. Continue reading →

R (Hough) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

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Queen’s Bench Division, Administrative Court, Planning Court, Lieven J, [2022] EWHC 1635 (Admin), 24 June 2022

The Court ruled that the PSED had not been complied with by Lord Greenhalgh, the relevant Minister, when he granted permission in August 2021 for the use of Napier Barracks in Kent as accommodation for asylum seekers until March 2025. While the minister had recorded his having taken into account an Equality Impact Assessment (‘EqIA’) drawn up on 20 September 2020 and updated on 15 July 2021, that EIA had been based on the premise that the use of the barracks would continue only until 21 September 2021. Continue reading →

R (Jwanczuk) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

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Queen’s Bench Division, Administrative Court, Kerr J, [2022] EWHC 2298 (Admin), 7 September 2022

The High Court ruled that the exclusion from entitlement to a bereavement support payment (‘BSP’) of the widower of a woman who had, by reason of disability, paid no national insurance contributions (because she was unable to work) breached Article 14 ECHR read with A1P1. In doing so the judge reached the same conclusion as Northern Ireland’s Court of Appeal had in O’Donnell v. Department for Communities [2020] NICA 36. Continue reading →

R (SPM) v Secretary of State for the Home Department; R (Women for Refugee Women) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

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Queen’s Bench Division, Administrative Court, Lang J, [2022] EWHC 2007 (Admin), 28 July 2022

This case concerned a challenge to the arrangements for providing access to publicly funded legal services for detainees at the women’s immigration removal centre (IRC) of Derwentside, County Durham. The IRC is located some distance from any airport of major city and, as a result of difficulties in securing solicitors to cover the publicly funded Detained Duty Advice Scheme (DDAS), interim arrangements had been put in place under which detainees at Derwentside were not entitled to in-person visits under the DDAS between December 2021 and July 2022. By contrast, detainees held in male IRCs were entitled to face-to-face DDAS visits during this period. Continue reading →