Mr Major’s Written Parliamentary Answer on the Mobility Allowance – 30 March 1987

Below is the text of Mr Major’s written Parliamentary Answer on the Mobility Allowance on 30th March 1987.

Mr. Frank Field Asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will list in the Official Report the circumstances covered by the authority issued in summer 1986 to make ex gratia payments to mobility allowance claimants.

Mr. Major In March 1986, a judgment by the Court of Appeal overturned a decision of a tribunal of social security commissioners which had held that a medical appeal tribunal could and should consider, in appropriate cases, whether a claimant who was unable to satisfy the conditions for an award of mobility allowance as at the date of claim did satisfy them from a later date.

Whilst the legislation was being amended to restore the law to what it was believed to be before the judgment, arrangements were made for extra-statutory payments to be made on the same basis as if awards from a later date were still permissible. As part of the amendment, now in section 71 of the Social Security Act 1986, such payments were put on to a statutory basis by treating them as payments of mobility allowance and by treating the recipients as having been entitled to the allowance for the period the payments were made.