Disabled tribunal member takes step towards legal action against DWP over years of ‘persecution’

A disabled woman who sits on a social security tribunal is set to take legal action against the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for breaching the Human Rights Act, after years of “persecution” over her benefits.

Katherine*, who continues to sit on the tribunal, decided her only option was to prepare a legal claim against DWP for its repeated and “significant failures” that have left her in significant mental distress and have driven her repeatedly to the brink of suicide.

She has now sent a legal letter of claim to the department as the first formal step towards legal proceedings.

She claims the department is responsible for “inhuman and degrading treatment”, discrimination, and a breach of her right to a private and family life under the act.

In its latest move, part of what she is believes is – at best – a “catalogue of incompetence”, or even a campaign of “persecution”, the department has stopped all her benefits, without telling her what it had done.

She has repeatedly told DWP of her history of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts, as well as her diagnosis of PTSD due to domestic violence.

But she says the department keeps making mistakes over the simple rule that covers benefit claimants who sit on tribunals, despite her informing them repeatedly that she is “actively suicidal”.

In May, a DWP spokesperson told DNS that it apologised for any distress it had caused, but it has never apologised directly to her.

Katherine, who has a law degree and has passed the legal practice course, was a justice of the peace (a lay magistrate) for 15 years and applied for a position as a disability qualified member of the social security tribunal in 2017.

Since 2014, she has been in the support group of employment and support allowance (ESA), which would usually place a strict limit on how much she can earn every week under its permitted work rules.

But because she is a tribunal member, those rules do not apply to her.

She lives in the south-west of England and started working as a disability qualified panel member of the first-tier tribunal in December 2018, sitting on a panel with a judge and a medical member and hearing benefit appeals.

She initially wrote to DWP before she started working with the tribunal to check if the part-time tribunal role was allowed under permitted work and what impact it would have on her ESA if she took it up, but the department never replied to her letter.

She was soon told by her judicial mentor about a DWP regulation that allowed ESA claimants working as tribunal members to work a maximum of one full day or two half days a week, and still receive their full ESA entitlement.

Ever since, she has kept strictly under that limit.

But within weeks, DWP was sending her letters telling her she had exceeded the permitted work limits – which appeared to be based on a fundamental misunderstanding of their own rules – deducting money from her ESA payments and fining her £50.

In a period of just over a year, she was sent 15 different entitlement, overpayment and civil penalty decisions by DWP.

All but one of these decisions were later conceded by DWP or set aside by the first-tier tribunal, she says.

Since DNS reported on her case in May, DWP has continued to insist that Katherine is mistaken in her reading of the law, despite the regulations – and two tribunal judgments – apparently making it clear that she is correct.

Now, just two months after the article, DWP has removed her ESA, despite promising not to do this until the dispute over the regulation was resolved.

She only found out what it had done through a call from her local council, which left her “shaking”.

She said: “I feel sick as I don’t know how I will be able to get my income back and I am on my own. It takes years to go through appeal.”

She said DWP’s actions had forced her to take a formal step towards legal action under the Human Rights Act.

She said: “How else can I end DWP’s persecution against me?

“I just want them to stop causing me so much harm and to treat me in accordance with the law.”

A DWP spokesperson said: “We are currently reviewing the details of this case.”

*She has asked to remain anonymous

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