The "bedroom tax" judgment has implications far beyond bedrooms

The High Court has rejected the “bedroom tax” claimants’ case. In a ruling issued earlier this morning, Lord Justice Laws said that ‘the PSED [Public Sector Equality Duty on the benefit reforms] was fulfilled; and the effects of the HB [Housing Benefit] cap were properly considered in terms of the discipline imposed by the requirement of proportionality.’ On the point of the government providing additional help for disabled people affected by the cap, the judge wrote: ‘provision of extra funding for DHPs [‘discretionary housing payments’] and advice and guidance on its use cannot be said to be a disproportionate approach to the difficulties which those persons faced.’

Laws added that certain arguments of the claimants ‘amount to an attempt to persuade the court to “micro-manage” the policy-making process’. He expanded on this elsewhere in the judgment. Two paragraphs are worth noting because they have a clear bearing on the rows that are brewing between the government and certain legal groups on the issues of judicial review and the European Convention on Human Rights.