High Court rules payment delays for disabled people “unlawful”
The government unlawfully delayed personal independence payment (PIP) to people with disabilities, the High Court has held.
Ruling in R (on the application of Ms C and another) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Zacchaeus 2000 Trust intervening) [2015] EWHC 1607 (Admin), Mrs Justice Patterson held that work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith acted unreasonably and unlawfully by not awarding PIP, which replaced disability living allowance in October 2013, within a reasonable timescale.
The claimants argued that the government took an “unlawfully long time” to provide them with the new benefit. Government figures released in March showed more than 3,000 people making new claims for the benefit had waited for more than a year to receive their payments.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) accepted that there is an implied duty to determine applications within a reasonable time but argued that this was a flexible concept dependent on the context and circumstances.
Delivering her judgment, Patterson J said the delay in both cases was “not only unacceptable, as conceded by the defendant, but was unlawful”.
However, she held there was no breach of C and W’s human rights since it was a “temporary backlog”, and also rejected the argument that their claims should be treated as a test case because of the “considerable variations in individual circumstances”.
The court heard how many applicants had experienced desperate financial struggles and been forced to borrow from friends or turn to loan sharks.
Leigh Day solicitor Ugo Hayter, who represented Z2K, a charity intervening in the case, says: “Even now, two years on from its inception in spring 2013, there remains a backlog of over 60,000 claimants, 23% of whom, as at April 2015, had been waiting over 20 weeks for their decision.
“Just under two million disabled people currently receiving DLA will be moved over to PIP later this year.”
Minister for disabled people, Justin Tomlinson, says: “We have taken decisive action to speed up PIP waiting times and we are pleased the court has recognised the huge progress made. The average new PIP claimant now waits only seven weeks for an assessment.”
