PZ v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

A tribunal deciding entitlement to Personal Independence Payment must confine its questioning and reasoning to matters relevant to the statutory issues and the relevant assessment period. Evidence about a claimant’s immigration history or motivation for coming to the United Kingdom is irrelevant unless it bears on those issues. Reliance on such matters may also create an appearance of bias. The assessment of ability to perform PIP activities must be holistic over the relevant period, rather than based on an isolated journey. Where irrelevant considerations and apparent bias may have affected the outcome, the First-tier Tribunal’s decision contains a material error of law and should be set aside and remitted for rehearing.

The claimant appealed against a decision of the First-tier Tribunal, which had dismissed his appeal concerning entitlement to Personal Independence Payment. The principal issue was whether his mental health condition affected his ability to plan and follow journeys during the period relevant to the Secretary of State’s decision of 3 October 2022.

During the hearing, the tribunal questioned him about how he had travelled from Slovakia to the United Kingdom in 2016, whether he had entered illegally, and why he had come to the United Kingdom. The Upper Tribunal considered whether that questioning indicated reliance on irrelevant matters and created an appearance of bias.

1. Appeal allowed. The First-tier Tribunal’s decision was set aside under section 12(2)(a) and (b)(i) of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007. The case was remitted for a fresh hearing before a differently constituted tribunal.
2. The appeal concerned the claimant’s ability to plan and follow journeys during the period up to 3 October 2022. His ability to travel by plane, boat or coach in 2016 could not establish how his fluctuating mental health affected that ability six years later. Nor was a single journey by public transport necessarily inconsistent with evidence that he did not use public transport because of anxiety.
3. The questioning about the claimant’s immigration history and his reasons for coming to the United Kingdom had no clear relevance to the entitlement conditions. The Tribunal therefore appeared to have taken irrelevant factors into account.
4. The test for apparent bias was whether the fair-minded and informed observer, having considered the facts, would conclude that there was a real possibility that the judge was biased: Porter v Magill [2002] 2 AC 357. The questioning could cause such an observer to think that views about immigration might influence the decision on the claimant’s benefit claim.
5. PIP activities must be assessed holistically over the entirety of the relevant assessment period under regulations 7(1A) and 13 of the Social Security (Personal Independence Payment) Regulations 2013, rather than by reference to a single snapshot event.
6. The errors were material because, without them, the outcome might have been different. Other alleged errors did not need to be determined because they would be subsumed by the rehearing.

• Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals Chamber): allowed the appeal against the First-tier Tribunal’s decision dated 19 April 2024, set that decision aside, and remitted the case for rehearing.
• First-tier Tribunal (Social Entitlement Chamber): dismissed the claimant’s appeal concerning the Secretary of State’s decision on Personal Independence Payment.