Universal Credit in UK Law

The mechanism by which this achieved is complex but is as follows. Regulation 5 of the Transitional Regulations provides that a claimant is not entitled to certain benefits, including income support and housing benefit. Regulation 6 provides that a person may not make a claim for income support or housing benefit except as provided in that regulation.

In terms of the person who moves within a local housing authority area, the position appears to be dealt with (albeit curiously) in regulation 6(3) of the Transitional Regulations. That provides that a person makes an application for a benefit if he takes any action which results in a decision on a claim being taken under certain regulations.

In any event, the material before court does not establish that the Transitional Regulations as they stand strike a fair balance between the interests of the individual and the interests of the community in bringing about a phased transition to universal credit. In all the circumstances of this case, the operation of the implementation arrangements in the way they do is manifestly without reasonable foundation and fails to strike a fair balance.

Under the new system, a single tax credit is payable in respect of each child, irrespective of whether the claimant is in or out of work, and is administered by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC). CTC is like income support and jobseeker's allowance, in that it is a benefit rather than a disregard and it is means-tested, so that the higher one's income the less the benefit, until eventually it tapers out altogether.

It seems clear from Stec, however, that the normally strict test for justification of sex discrimination in the enjoyment of the Convention rights gives way to the "manifestly without reasonable foundation" test in the context of state benefits. The same principles were applied to the sex discrimination involved in denying widow's pensions to men in Runkee v United Kingdom [2007] 2 FCR 178, para 36.

There may be such an obvious, relevant difference between the claimant and those with whom he seeks to compare himself that their situations cannot be regarded as analogous. Then the court's scrutiny may best be directed at considering whether the differentiation has a legitimate aim and whether the means chosen to achieve the aim is appropriate and not disproportionate in its adverse impact.

For by then there was — and there still remains — clear authority both in the Humphreys case and in the bedroom tax case for the proposition that, at any rate in relation to the government's need to justify what would otherwise be a discriminatory effect of a rule governing entitlement to welfare benefits, the sole question is whether it is manifestly without reasonable foundation.