UK Social Security and Child Support Commissioners' Decisions

[2002] UKSSCSC CJSA_4665_2001 (12 April 2002)

 


Commissioner's File: CJSA 4665/01

JOBSEEKERS ALLOWANCE ACT 1995

SOCIAL SECURITY ACT 1998

APPEAL FROM DECISION OF APPEAL TRIBUNAL

ON A QUESTION OF LAW

DECISION OF THE SOCIAL SECURITY COMMISSIONER

Claim for: Jobseekers Allowance

Appeal Tribunal: Portsmouth

Tribunal Case Ref: U/03/201/2001/00617

Tribunal date: 20 June 2001

Reasons issued: 18 August 2001

1. The decision of the Portsmouth tribunal sitting on 20 June 2001 was in my judgment erroneous in law for the reason identified in the grant of leave to appeal dated 17 December 2001 at page 70 and agreed in the admirably clear and objective written submission of Mr A Myers on behalf of the Secretary of State dated 19 February 2002 at pages 72-73.

2. I accept the concessions in that submission as rightly made. What happened was that the claimant, who was in receipt of an indefinite award of Jobseekers Allowance from 7 February 2000, made comments in job application forms about the employment service and government training initiatives, on the faith of which he had left his previous job and by which he felt let down. The employment service refused to forward these applications to employers, because of the criticisms they felt to be directed against themselves. His applications were otherwise completed quite properly and his own evidence was that it was never his intention to spoil his chances of actually getting the jobs he was applying for. There was no evidence that any employers had been, or would have been, put off by the nature of these comments (which were of a generalised if somewhat bitter nature, about the unreliability of governments and their promises) from considering the claimant for employment. They never got the chance to consider his completed applications, because the employment service held them up.

3. I agree with the appellant and the Secretary of State that in those circumstances it had not been shown he had "failed to apply" for the posts concerned, and the tribunal were wrong to uphold the stopping of his benefit on that ground.

4. I set aside the tribunal decision and (as also agreed in the Secretary of State's submission) exercise the power in section 14(8)(a) Social Security Act 1998 to substitute the decision I am satisfied the tribunal should have given, that the evidence before the tribunal did not establish that the claimant had failed to apply for the particular vacancy relied on (a job at Sainsbury's) so that no sanction results.

5. In so holding I am not of course condoning the making of cantankerous comments in job applications about the government, the employment agency, or anyone else. There will, I am sure, be other cases where the way a claimant completes (or spoils) a job application will be so unsatisfactory and unfit to be put in front of any employer as to prevent it from counting as a genuine application at all, so that he or she will have "failed to apply": it is all a question of fact. Nor does the fact that this appeal has succeeded on the legal ground mean this claimant will be anything other than foolish if he continues to ignore the advice of the employment service on what to put in his application, and what in his own interests he should keep to himself, if he genuinely wishes to maximise his chances of obtaining employment.

6. The appeal is allowed and my decision substituted accordingly.

(Signed)

P L Howell

Commissioner

12 April 2002