Mandatory reconsideration rules deemed unlawful for ESA claimants

Connor Coombe-Whitlock wrote:EMPLOYMENT and Support Allowance (ESA) and other benefits rules may change dramatically in the coming weeks and months. A court ruling on a claimant's recent experience of mandatory reconsideration could have profound ramifications for the future.

Just to let you know DWP will not be appealing R (Connor) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. We have settled all outstanding matters. So advisers should be able to use my case as settled case law. I hope welfare rights community will take up the baton and apply my case to other benefits. It potentially has wide implications. As far as I am aware this is the first time in a UK court that financial disadvantage has been held to be an incompatible hindrance to one’s article 6 convention right. Although not in the judgement, Justice Swift accepted a submission that the very act of a minister deciding to lay a regulation can be unlawful, if that reg is ECHR incompatible There is also no “manifestly without reasonable foundation’ barrier to A6 unlike A14 that most welfare benefit JRs focus on. Anyway that’s for the welfare rights community to take up.