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"CE/191/2010 — Difference of opinion between examining doctor and claimant's GP / adequacy of reasons for tribunal's decision

[2010] UKUT 266 (AAC)

Background

The claimant was in receipt of employment and support allowance, the award having been made on the basis that he was suffering from depression and low mood. However, following a medical examination by a health care professional, who did not accept that the claimant had any functional impairment, the award was superseded.

Having appealed against the decision, in addition to his oral evidence to the tribunal the claimant produced a note from his GP, dated the day prior to the hearing, which stated that he should refrain from work for 3 months and gave the diagnosis as 'low mood, depression, agoraphobia, grief, bereavement'.
However, the tribunal upheld the Secretary of State's decision, and the claimant appealed to the Upper Tribunal.

Issues before the Upper Tribunal

Whether the tribunal's findings of fact and the reasons for its decision were adequate, and whether it explained why the report from the approved disability analyst [health care professional] was accepted in preference to the claimant's own evidence.

Reasons for decision

Judge Parker highlights that there has to be a sense of balance about what a tribunal is required to set out in its statement, and that whilst an Upper Tribunal judge is concerned with whether the statement of reasons is adequate, perfection is not required. Instead, the matter can be judged only in the context of the evidence and submissions as a whole. What matters, Judge Parker says, is that a party should be able to discern the reasons why their evidence has failed to satisfy.

However, Judge Parker holds that, as the tribunal in the present case gave no indication as to why it preferred the doctor’s opinion to the claimant’s own evidence, its reasons are necessarily insufficient -

'... the crux is that the tribunal moved from 'findings' to 'decision' but nowhere, either in form or in substance, did it explain its reasoning. If appropriate, the tribunal could have stated its preference for the doctor’s opinion very simply by adopting his clinical findings as its own and stating what it read from those clinical findings on their application to the question whether the claimant did or did not fit a particular descriptor. Without discussion of the clinical findings and what they objectively demonstrated on a balance of probabilities about the appellant’s functional impairment, it was in no way made clear to him why the Secretary of State had discharged the onus of proof.'

Decision

Judge Parker allows the claimant's appeal and remits it for rehearing by a new tribunal.

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