A High Court judge yesterday (March 5th) gave Iain Duncan Smith 14 days to show why there should not be a judicial review of the Government’s so-called ‘bedroom tax’, amid concerns that disabled people will be disproportionately affected by the change in benefit rules.
Ten disabled and vulnerable children, along with seven parents and five other adults, launched legal proceedings against the Work and Pensions Secretary on Friday (March 1st) and were hoping for a judicial review before the tax comes into effect on 1 April but Mr Justice Mitting said that this was too short a timescale.
However, he said that if, after hearing the grounds against the challenge he was satisfied that the judicial review should go ahead, a full hearing could take place in early May.
Lawyers for the Work and Pensions Secretary argued that the claimants could obtain relief through the £30m discretionary fund provided to local authorities by central Government.
However, the judge said that the fund may not be deep enough, having heard from the National Housing Federation that it is £100m short, and said that the case raises “significant questions of constitutional law”.
Under the new benefit rules, housing benefit will only be payable on the basis that children under 16 of the same gender share a room and children under 10 will share a room regardless of their gender.
All 10 of the child claimants fall into one of the categories and are expected to share a bedroom with a sibling, although all of them have also been assessed as needing their own room, either due to disabilities, because they are at risk of violence from a sibling, or because of trauma experienced as a result of domestic violence.