Judge bids to block cap on benefits for single parents
As he says policy violates rights of claimants with toddlers...
A hIGh Court judge yesterday struck a major blow against flagship Tory benefit reforms designed to end dependence on handouts.
The Benefit Cap, which ensures noone can get more from the state without working than they could earn on an average wage, breaks human rights rules, Mr Justice Collins said.
he ruled that the cap, brought in by parliamentary legislation in 2012, discriminates against single parents with children under two.
Mothers of such children find it hard to work, the judge said, adding that one reason why they cannot get jobs is that they need time to breastfeed their children.
The legislation had stated that people in such situations can only receive benefits beyond the £20,000 cap if they work at least 16 hours a week.
The decision, which is likely to affect 5,000 benefit claimants and undermines the benefit reform programme, was condemned by Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader who produced the reforms.
Mr Duncan Smith, who was Work and Pensions Secretary under David Cameron, said it was wrong for judges to try to knock down laws passed by Parliament.
‘The Benefit Cap was passed through Parliament as primary legislation,’ he said. ‘What the judiciary is doing is saying is that once legislation is passed they can strike it down.
‘The Benefit Cap has been unbelievably successful at ensuring that people who pay taxes have a real sense of fairness. It means no-one on benefits should be making more than people who are working hard. It has been unbelievably effective at getting people into work and transforming lives.’ The cap says that no-one should get state handouts worth more than £20,000, or £23,000 in London. This is the money that would be taken home, after taxes, by someone on a wage of £25,000, or £29,000 in London.
The cap does not apply to anyone who works 16 hours a week so they can claim tax credits, and extra benefits called Discretionary housing Payments are available from councils to those thought to be suffering because of it.
An attempt to wreck the cap failed in the Supreme Court in 2013. But in a judicial review brought by four unnamed single parents, and supported by pressure groups including Shelter, Mr Justice Collins said there were grounds to reconsider.
Those at the centre of the case were: a woman homeless because of domestic violence, a recovering drug user, a woman without support from the two fathers of her four children, and another who had one of her four children after being raped by her husband. The judge said: ‘The evidence shows
‘Unbelievably successful’
that the cap is capable of real damage to individuals such as the claimants. They are not workshy but find it, because of the care difficulties, impossible to comply with the work requirement.
‘Most lone parents with children under two are not the sort of households the cap was intended to cover and, since they will depend on Discretionary housing Payments, they will remain benefit households. real misery is being caused to no good purpose.’
Mr Justice Collins said important reasons why lone parents with children under two were a special case were that ‘childcare for chil- dren under two is more expensive since children of that tender age need more one-to-one care.
‘ Mothers are encouraged to breastfeed their children which makes it difficult if not impossible to enter work for the 16 hours needed to avoid the cap at least until an age when breastfeeding will no longer be needed.’
he said the arguments of ministers that it is best for children if their parents are in work, and that it is not fair for people on benefits to get more than working people, fail to ‘engage with the problems facing lone parents with children under two’. Judges are not sup- posed to overrule laws passed by Parliament, but many analysts fear judicial review, by which judges are supposed to examine whether the state has behaved within the law, has been perverted to do just that.
Mr Justice Collins said there could be no right of appeal against the Benefit Cap applied in keeping with the law, so ‘judicial review is the only possible remedy if a challenge is to be made’.
he said european human rights law says everyone has the right to enjoy their possessions, and ‘a welfare benefit is a possession’. This must happen ‘without discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status’.
Under Tony Blair’s human rights Act, judges are allowed to make declarations that any British law is incompatible with the european Convention on human rights.
But such a declaration does not strike down the law in the way that Mr Justice Collins’s judicial review did yesterday. It only advises the government of the day that it should be reformed.
The Department for Work and Pensions is planning to appeal.