Legal Update: Court Report - Challenge to the Welfare Reform Act

Case name JS and Others v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Case number (2013) EWHC 3350

Judge Lord Justice Elias and Mr Justice Bean

Location High Court of Justice

The Welfare Reform Act 2012 introduced the "benefit cap" to limit the amount of welfare benefits that a recipient could receive.

The claimants (the mother and youngest child of three separate single-parent families) submitted that due to their circumstances they would suffer harsh consequences as a result of the cap and contended that many other lone parents will be affected. The challenge was to the 2012 regulations and in particular the inclusion of child benefit, child tax credit and housing benefit in the list of prescribed benefits contained in regulation 75G; or alternatively the failure to include large families, especially lone parents with several children at home, among the exceptions to the cap.

They submitted that the justification was inherently weak, given the damaging impact of the policy. The Child Poverty Action Group agreed, but focused its submission more on a submission that the rules operate in an arbitrary and unjust way which is unrelated to one of the key objectives of the scheme and is therefore incapable of justification.

The court held that a difference in treatment must be justified: the policy must pursue a legitimate aim and there must be a reasonable relationship of proportionality between the means employed and the aim sought to be realised. But it held that the question in the case is ultimately a policy issue, and did not think it could be said that the scheme is so manifestly unfair or disproportionate as to justify an interference by the courts.