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Lady Hale: Govt’s austerity policies have posed some uncomfortable problems for the courts
Worth a read ... speech by President of the Supreme Court, Lady Hale:
... families are fighting for enough to live on and to make ends meet [and] the UK government’s austerity policies have undoubtedly made this worse and have posed some uncomfortable problems for the courts ..
Strasbourg is quite clear that the protection of the ‘home’ in article 8 does not require the state to provide housing and the protection of property in article 1 of the first protocol does not require the state to provide welfare benefits. This is a matter of socio-economic policy for the individual member states. But what we do provide must be provided without unjustified discrimination ....
Lady Hale then goes on to discuss a number of benefit-related cases ... including Stec v United Kingdom; Humphreys v Revenue and Customs Commissioners; R (SG) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions; and R (Carmichael) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.