Whitehall refuses disabled back-pay

THE British government is refusing to make payments back-dated to 2001 to expatriates who had disability benefits cut off after coming to France.

It agreed last year, after a campaign by disabled people and supporters, to reinstate benefits such as the Disability Living Allowance, because of a 2007 European Court of Justice ruling that the UK initially contested.

However it has reiterated its refusal to back-date payments further than 2007, even though it had been cutting them off since 2001.

Maria Miller, the minister for the disabled, said in a letter to MP Roger Gale, that this was because the ECJ "only made clear" in 2007 that cutting benefits was illegal under EU rules.

British law does not provide for earlier back-dating in such cases, she said.

Mr Gale, who has been campaigning for those affected, said: "This is a disappointing response and it seems to be based on the peculiar interpretation that 'until the ECJ judgment we did not know we were wrong, so we were not wrong'."