Court orders expedited hearing of NRPF challenge but declines to suspend policy beforehand
The High Court has ordered a full hearing of a legal challenge to the government’s ‘no recourse to public funds’ policy.
The claimant, the child of a single mother, had sought an urgent suspension of the policy last Friday to allow those unable to work because of COVID-19 to have immediate access to welfare support. The Unity Project is supporting the claim.
Law firm Deighton Pierce Glynn, which is acting for the claimant, said the judges had set a court date of 6-7 May but did not suspend the policy.
It added: “The hearing will finally put an end to many months of delay by the Home Office, which has repeatedly sought to dismiss or postpone the case, leaving thousands of families living in poverty.”
The firm claimed that at and just before the hearing, the Home Office had made a series of important concessions, “including accepting for the first time that the legal challenge to the NRPF policy raises ‘serious issues’, which should be looked at by the court urgently”.
The Home Office is also said to have issued revised guidance to staff instructing them to “provide sympathetic and expeditious decision making” during the pandemic when dealing with applicants seeking to have their NRPF condition lifted.
DPG said that together with The Unity Project, it had been pressing the Home Office for over a year to comply with its legal duty to produce a Policy Equality Statement on the impact of NRPF.
The government had now been given a deadline of 21 April to comply, and if they do not the judges made it clear that the May hearing will go ahead without it, the firm said.
Partner Adam Hundt said: “We know April will be a long and bleak month for families who have lost some or all of their income because of the outbreak, and who were already in desperate straits.
“However, we welcome the expedited hearing, which puts our client in a strong position to challenge the policy as a whole, and end the discrimination and damage it causes.”
