Administrative Court: Julian Knowles J, [2020] EWHC 2482 (Admin), 23 September 2020

The claimant unsuccessfully sought to challenge the calculation of the housing element of Universal Credit (UC) on the basis, inter alia, that it discriminated between weekly and monthly paying tenants. The Judge accepted that the discrimination at issue fell within the scope of A1P1 and was “prepared to assume in the Claimant’s favour that, having regard to the broad approach in … cases [such as R (Stott) v Secretary of State for Justice [2018] UKSC 59, [2018] 3 WLR 1831 and R (DA & Ors) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Shelter Children’s Legal Services and others intervening) [2019] UKSC 21, [2019] 1 WLR 3289] that being a weekly tenant is such a status”. In his view, however, that the applicable test for justification in the context of welfare benefit was the “manifestly without reasonable foundation” test had been “authoritatively determined by the Supreme Court’  in DA [65], approving Humphreys v HM Revenue and Customs Commissioners” [2012] UKSC 18, [2012] 1 WLR 1545, §§20-22. (Note that the Humphreys approach has been superseded as a result of the decision of the Supreme Court in R (SC) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2021] UKSC 26, [2021] 3 WLR 428 (see later post)). Continue reading →