Court of Appeal: Sir Geoffrey Vos MR, King and Dingemans LJJ, [2022] EWCA Civ 86, 4 February 2022

The claimant sought to challenge the exclusion from an infected blood compensation scheme of people who contracted hepatitis B (HBV). He had contracted HBV from unscreened blood in 1989 but HBV was excluded from the scheme because blood donors had been screened for HBV since 1972. The claimant sought to rely on Articles 8 and 14 and A1P1 ECHR and on s15 EqA (disability discrimination). His claim failed and the Court of Appeal rejected his appeal, relying on the Supreme Court’s decision in R (SC) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions & Ors [2021] UKSC 26,  (see previous post) and ruling that any differential treatment of similarly situated individuals was justifiable given the intensity of review appropriate to judgments of social and economic policy notwithstanding the fact that disability discrimination was alleged. Continue reading →