Under-occupancy Charge

Baroness Stedman-Scott Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Yes, that is precisely the point. As far as we can tell, one reason that the Court of Appeal took this decision was to send the cases to join another set of cases that the Supreme Court will look at in March. The Supreme Court will, therefore, be able to take a view and reach a judgment across the piece on these issues and will do so relatively rapidly. So this is really by way of an interim legal position before we have something more definitive.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

Can the Minister tell us how many cases the Government have won in relation to this policy?

[Lord Freud]

So far, we have had 10 cases in the High Court and we have won them all. We have just lost these last two in the Court of Appeal but we have won the five joined appeals in the Court of Appeal and those are the ones that are now going to the Supreme Court. So, until this last judgment, the legal system has accepted that the way that we ameliorate these hard cases using the discretionary housing payment is an appropriate way of providing the protections that I think all of us in this Chamber want to make sure are there.