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Discriminatory gathering of evidence for UC?
Hi
I have a client who is an EU national, she has her EU settled status and claims UC. In September 2023 she started getting requests for evidence (passports for her and her children, pictures of her outside her house with the door open and the house number showing, tenancy agreement, letters from GP, letters from schools etc etc). My client provided the evidence, was repeatedly told it wasn’t right for a myriad of reasons, repeatedly provided the information again, tried to arrange to attend the job centre to provide the information but her UC was stopped. Client made a new claim for UC, we had a successful MR against the decision to stop the old claim, the new claim didn’t pay housing costs, the two claims were aligned and we got the housing costs sorted but the client had to take in her tenancy agreement again to get this sorted out. Once the client’s claims were aligned UC again required further evidence of the client’s passport, her kids passports etc – that was in December 2023 and now we’re in January and the enhanced review team seem to be involved and again require her to provide her passport, her children’s passports, school letters etc. The repeated demands, threats that non-provision will affect payments is really weighing on my client’s mind and making her increasingly low.
It could just be a series of unfortunate events for my poor client, but it made me think this evidence gathering might be disproportionally affecting non-British nationals and I just wondered if anyone else has experience of this particularly with non-British nationals as it seems like an extra right to reside/habitual residence test for claimants who already satisfy this with their EU settlement status. Has anyone had these kind of repeated requests with British claimants?
Thanks in advance,
Grace
Reports of this kind of thing has been swirling around for a while and it does seem that people of certain nationalities are repeatedly targeted.
The DWP’s suspension of Universal Credit claims must stop. This is why.
MP raises concern over Bulgarian nationals’ UK benefit suspensions
Thanks for this reply Paul - I’ll have a look at the links you’ve sent
Hi Grace,
I think likely a discriminatory algorithm is behind this. We have seen similar with the Home Office, see:
For a deep dive this article links to an opinion by some very clued up barristers regarding discrimination against EU nationals by algorithm:
https://thelegaleducationfoundation.org/articles/government-automated-decision-making-may-breach-equality-laws-leading-barristers-warn
If your client would like to take this further feel free to contact me, would be keen to get stuck in on this sort of algorithm driven discrimination. We need to nip it in the bud.
Ta,
Ryan
[ Edited: 21 Feb 2024 at 10:11 am by Ryan Bradshaw ]Public Law Project have done work looking at this area, I think specifically in relation to whether there is potentially discrimination against EU nationals with pre-settled status.
It would also be worth talking to Work Rights Centre. Happy to put you in touch if useful.
EDIT - I have now realised that Paul has already linked a WRC article!
Claire
[ Edited: 21 Feb 2024 at 11:53 am by Claire H ]Out of interest, they say they do not know the nationality of those whose claims have been suspended https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/nationality_of_uc_claims_suspend#incoming-2543517
Possibly the question could be rephrased to see if it elicits a different answer.
Out of interest, they say they do not know the nationality of those whose claims have been suspended https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/nationality_of_uc_claims_suspend#incoming-2543517
Possibly the question could be rephrased to see if it elicits a different answer.
In one way, this is more worrying. If the algorithm operates in a discriminatory way and the humans on the Risk Review Team don’t have demographic data, the humans can never know whether the system as a whole is operating in a discriminatory way.