From Benefit and work web site
LEGACY BENEFITS APPEAL FAILS
The Court of Appeal has decided that the DWP’s failure to give legacy benefits claimants the same £20 uplift that was given to universal credit (UC) claimants during the pandemic was lawful.
Shockingly the judge agreed with the DWP that the uplift was needed to prevent newly unemployed people developing ‘dependence on welfare’, rather than to protect claimants from hardship.
The court accepted that the uplift was paid “in recognition of the fact that sudden, short-term unemployment can trigger social and health problems, leading to dependence on welfare, and hampering a return to employment.”
Legacy benefits claimants were not a priority for help because they were: “. . . either not in the labour market at all by virtue of their disabilities, or only to a limited extent.”
It’s a terrible decision, which ignores the fact that none of these explanations were put forward by the DWP at the time.
It also defies any kind of logic to claim that giving new claimants an extra £20 prevents them developing health problems and welfare dependency, but it’s only worth doing during a pandemic.
Sadly, we suspect that it’s such a crushing decision that it is unlikely to be appealed to the Supreme Court.
But enormous respect to the claimants who took the case this far
Joss
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