Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for what reasons refugees with disabilities who have been deemed entitled to disability living allowance have different backdating entitlements depending on whether their claim happened to be stockpiled before or after the Upper Tribunal ruling of 17 March 2016 on the past presence test.

No claims were stockpiled before the Upper Tribunal ruling of 17 March 2016, 40 Disability Living Allowance claims were stockpiled after the ruling.

Section 27 of the Social Security Act 1998 provides that, where the Upper Tribunal decides on a social security appeal that the Secretary of State has made an error of law in his original decision and other claims subsequently fall to be decided by the Secretary of State, the judgment generally is not to be applied in relation to any period that predates the Upper Tribunal’s decision (s.27(3)). This statutory rule does not apply to the person who brought the original appeal, to people who have already lodged an appeal against a decision or who are still in time to do so, or to people whose case the Secretary of State has stockpiled (or whose appeal he has stayed) pending the judgment under section 25 of the Act.