I dithered over whether to just stick this link in the free school meals thread as a 'by the way' but I suppose it deserves its own thread. Apologies for the extremely dry loser-length post.
DWP spent nearly £200,000 fighting single mothers over Universal Credit change
The court judgment is here by the way: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2020/778.htmlThe Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) spent nearly £200,000 fighting an unsuccessful legal battle against four single mothers over Universal Credit rules that it is now changing, Inside Housing can reveal.
In June, the Court of Appeal ruled that Universal Credit payment period regulations that caused some working claimants’ benefit awards to fluctuate wildly from month to month were “irrational” and “unlawful”.
It came after the government attempted to overturn a January 2019 ruling by the High Court over the “non-banking day salary shift” issue.
Effectively, the bug meant that claimants were treated as having earned double if they received two pay cheques in the same monthly Universal Credit assessment period and nothing if they did not get paid the next month.
During the hearing, the court heard that around 85,000 people are affected, although the government says the number is closer to 1,500.
The case was brought forward by four working single mothers, who claimed that the rules had cost them hundreds of pounds a year and caused them to suffer severe cash flow problems.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Inside Housing, the DWP said it spent £188,190.82 fighting the cases.
That includes £28,426.02 invoiced by the Government Legal Department to defend the initial challenge and another £31,764.80 for the appeal.
The government was also ordered to pay the mothers’ legal costs following the ruling – amounting to £78,000 in the first instance and a further £50,000 following its decision to appeal.
Labour called the figures “a disgrace”.
Ministers agreed to amend Universal Credit regulations to resolve the issue shortly after the Court of Appeal judgement was handed down.
Legislation effecting the changes was published last week and is due to come into effect on 16 November.
Welfare delivery minister Will Quince said in a response to a written question from Labour MP Stephen Timms that the new regulations will “reallocate a payment of earnings reported via the Real Time Information service to a different Universal Credit assessment period” where needed.
Shadow work and pensions secretary Jonathan Reynolds said: “It is a disgrace that the government have spent nearly £200,000 of taxpayers’ money battling four single mums in the Court of Appeal.
“The fact that these women had to take the government to court, while they were suffering financial hardship, to correct an obvious problem with the system is extremely worrying.”
A DWP spokesperson said: “This regulation has now been amended in line with the court’s decision.”
So the bill for the government's own costs is £60,190.82 and the 4 claimants' costs came to £128,000. So in fairness the government spent a lot less on its own costs for a case it kept losing to stop single mothers getting benefits, but those were the costs for four people and while there was no doubt lots of overlap with the work it would still have involved advising them all separately, taking instructions from them all separately, etc etc.
Also, I'm speculating a fair bit here but another thing is that the claimants were presumably funded by legal aid, but the costs claimed back from the government by the legal representatives will be at 'inter partes' rates i.e. something around the solicitor guideline rates that are used by the courts to assess costs in any court proceedings, not just legal aid ones.
One of the claimants worked in York, so I'll use York rates as an example (although the lawyers might have tried to claim London rates). This is really, really rough - there will probably have been people with various levels of experience working on the cases, the fees will include lots of barristers' fees and other outlays like court fees etc, so take these figures with an absolutely massive pinch of salt, it's just to illustrate (assuming I'm not talking out of my arse about the whole thing).
The guideline rates are here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/solicitors- ... urly-rates
So York is 'National Grade 2'. Given this was a pretty significant case I'll assume the costs were incurred by a solicitor with over 8 years' experience so that's £201 per hour.
Assuming the £128,000 includes VAT, that's about £106,000, or about 528 hours' work.
Legal aid rates are a bit all over the place, here are the fees regulations: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/201 ... view=plain
So e.g. you can get £6.75 for a 'routine' letter and £3.74 for a 'routine' phone call. The general hourly rate for preparation and attendance outside of London (not including court attendance) in the higher courts is £67.50 per hour. At 528 hours' work that comes to £35,640 plus VAT = £42,768.
So if the claimants hadn't won this case, their legal costs would (using this very rough and inaccurate outline) have come to about £42,768 for four people, as they would have only been able to claim the legal aid rates from the Legal Aid Agency and not the 'inter partes' rates. Compared to the government costs of £60,190.82.
Sorry another thing I should say is that you can claim 'uplifts' on those fees, up to about 50% I think, for bits of work that require exceptional urgency, exceptional skill etc. So just to add to the roughness...
Also just to point out this bit of the fees rules for legal aid (which isn't in the link to the regs as it's an amendment that hasn't been added yet even though it's been in place since 2018):
This basically means that if you bring judicial review proceedings but 'settle' the case with the other side before the court gives permission (you have to get 'permission' to bring judicial review proceedings before the court will sit and hear the whole case) then the government decides whether to pay you at all for all of the work you've done. And you don't get paid at all if you're refused permission. Normally for legal aid work, you apply for legal aid, set out the merits of the case in the application and wait for the Legal Aid Agency to say whether they will pay you for the work, and if they say yes you go on and do it and you get paid (at legal aid rates if the other side doesn't get ordered/agree to pay your costs). But these rules mean that they can say yes but unless you win outright, you might still not get paid. Judicial review cases can be hard to win and often include cases like this benefits one, homeless people etc. So that's not really ideal.Regulation 5A.—
(1) Where an application for judicial review is issued, the Lord Chancellor must not pay remuneration for civil legal services consisting of making that application unless—
(a) the court gives permission to bring judicial review proceedings;
(b) the court neither refuses nor gives permission to bring judicial review proceedings and the Lord Chancellor considers that it is reasonable to pay remuneration in the circumstances of the case, taking into account, in particular—
(i) the reason why the provider did not obtain a costs order or costs agreement in favour of the legally aided person;
(ii) the extent to which, and the reason why, the legally aided person obtained the outcome sought in the proceedings, and
(iii) the strength of the application for permission at the time it was filed, based on the law and on the facts which the provider knew or ought to have known at that time;
(c) the defendant withdraws the decision to which the application for judicial review relates and the withdrawal results in the court—
(i) refusing permission to bring judicial review proceedings, or
(ii) neither refusing nor giving permission;
(d) the court orders an oral hearing to consider—
(i) whether to give permission to bring judicial review proceedings;
(ii) whether to give permission to bring a relevant appeal, or
(iii) a relevant appeal, or
(e) the court orders a rolled-up hearing.
