www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/30...-schemes-duncan-smit
The government's "back to work" schemes at the centre of the high-profile Poundland case were legally flawed, the UK's highest court has ruled.
Cait Reilly won her long-running case against the Department for Work and Pensions in the supreme court after she first disputed the legality of the government's employment schemes in January 2012.
The work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, failed in his attempt to overturn an earlier court of appeal ruling that regulations from 2011 supposedly giving the schemes their legal footing were invalid. Five supreme court justices upheld the appeal court's decision.
The supreme court stopped short of ruling that the regulations constituted forced or compulsory labour, but decided it was unlawful for the government to fail to supply parliament and hundreds of thousands of jobseekers with proper information about the so-called workfare schemes that claimants were forced to undertake at pain of losing jobseeker's allowance.
The judgment would have resulted in the government having to refund £130m to about 250,000 unemployed people for unlawful sanctioning, had it not been for emergency retroactive legislation introduced by Duncan Smith in the spring.
After the introduction of that emergency law, the solicitors Public Interest Lawyers (PIL), who represent Reilly and her co-claimant, Jamieson Wilson, an unemployed lorry driver, lodged a judicial review accusing Duncan Smith of conspiring to undermine basic human rights by enacting the retroactive legislation. They say they will continue to pursue that judicial review after their success in the supreme court.
In a statement outside the court, the lawyer Tessa Gregory said: "We are delighted that the supreme court has dismissed the government' appeal and confirmed that the regulations under which most of the 'back to work' schemes were initially created were unlawful.
"The court upheld the findings that Iain Duncan Smith acted beyond the powers given to him by parliament by failing to provide any detail about the various schemes in the regulations and that, in any event, the required notice provisions had not been complied with. Iain Duncan Smith has sought to brand our clients as 'job snobs' but in reality all they have been seeking is a system that is fair and transparent."
After the ruling Reilly, 24, who works for the supermarket Morrisons, said she felt very proud, almost two years after she first contacted the Guardian about working unpaid at the discount retailer Poundland for a number of weeks.
"I feel very proud that people seemed to have realised there was an injustice going on, and that we have carried it on and reached the verdict today," she said. "It's quite unbelievable. I'm still getting my head around it. But it is a great result."
Reilly, a geology graduate from Birmingham, said the secretary of state needed to treat unemployed people with respect. "Jobseekers … are just trying to make something of themselves, like anyone else," she said. "We're not job snobs."
She added that for job-seeking to be made harder by poor DWP regulations was a terrible irony. "He [Duncan Smith] needs to realise they need to help us, not punish us," she said.
The DWP said it was disappointed that the supreme court had agreed with the court of appeal. It said it had dealt with the matter after introducing emergency legislation in March. Despite the fact that the legislation was subject to judicial review proceedings, it was "very confident" of its validity and would "defend it robustly", the department said.
Duncan Smith said: "We have always said that it was ridiculous to claim that our schemes amounted to forced labour, and yet again we have won this argument."
PIL said it would seek further legal action, and called on jobseekers to make claims against previous sanctions. "We know that, like Jamie and Cait, hundreds of thousands of other jobseekers have not been, and continue not to be, provided with adequate information about the dizzying array of schemes," the lawyers said. "Following today's judgment, any such jobseekers can object to sanctions that have been imposed and seek the repayment of their benefits.
"It is truly staggering that Duncan Smith has found himself in this position even after fast-tracking emergency retrospective legislation through parliament. We intend to work with advice organisations to ensure that, following this ruling, affected individuals have the right information and assistance."
