The European Court of Human Rights has given judgment in DA and RA v United Kingdom (Application No.46692/19, 17 March 2026), unanimously finding no breach of Convention rights.
The application challenged the “revised benefit cap” (under the Welfare Reform Act 2016). The applicants were a lone parent and her child (aged under 2). They argued that the cap discriminated against lone parents of a child under 2 and children under 2 with a lone parent, contrary to Art.14 ECHR, read with Article 1 of the First Protocol and Art.8, putting their case as Thlimmenos discrimination (i.e. failure to treat differently persons in significantly different situations).
The main issue was justification. The Court concluded that, as the status claimed was not based on inherent or immutable characteristics and the applicant cohort were not a distinct group historically subject to prejudice with lasting consequences, the Government was not required to show “very weighty reasons” for their failure to treat the applicants differently [103]. The Court accepted that, as the revised cap was a general socio-economic measure, the legislature’s policy choice should be accepted unless “manifestly without reasonable foundation” (“MWRF”) [108]. In doing so the Court rejected the applicants’ submission that the Strasbourg case law confined the MWRF standard only to corrective transitional measures addressing an inequality, instead finding that the MWRF standard applied more widely where “very weighty reasons” were not required [106]-[108]. The Court also accepted that the degree of legislative and judicial scrutiny of the revised cap reinforced the appropriateness of a wide margin of appreciation [109]. The Court ultimately accepted that the revised cap was not MWRF and was within the Government’s wide margin of appreciation [115]-[116].
James Cornwell acted for the Government in the ECtHR proceedings.
