Legal challenge: Cait Reilly, pictured, was ‘forced’ to leave her voluntary work at a museum to stack shelves at Poundland or risk losing her benefits
- Cait Reilly said Government programme breached Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, prohibiting slavery and forced labour
- But the High Court threw out her claim today
- But the Government was criticised for not explaining the work was not mandatory, High Court heard
A graduate made to work for her jobless benefits as a shelf stacker in Poundland who said it was ‘forced labour’ which breached her human rights has lost her High Court case today.
Cait Reilly claimed that a Government scheme requiring her to work for free at the budget chain – or risk losing her £53.45-a-week jobseeker’s allowance -breached laws banning slavery.
Her lawyer even compared her client’s experience to asylum seekers being put in detention centres.
But throwing out her case today Justice Foskett said that ‘characterising such a scheme as involving or being analogous to “slavery” or “forced labour” seems to me to be a long way from contemporary thinking.’
Miss Reilly from Birmingham, claimed that the unpaid scheme she was on violated article four of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits forced labour and slavery.
The 23-year-old said she had to give up a voluntary post in a museum to take the placement but was promised a job interview if she completed two weeks training at Poundland. However she claimed that never materialised.
Unemployed mechanic Jamieson Wilson, 41, also challenged the legality of another Government work scheme that compels the jobless to take unpaid work, but he also lost his case.
However, Judge Fosket said both Miss Reilly and Mr Wilson were each entitled to a declaration that there had been breaches of the 2011 jobseeker’s allowance regulations in their cases.
Mistakes had been made in notifying Ms Reilly about the requirements of the Work Academy Scheme so that she did not appreciate the scheme was not mandatory. Mr Wilson had been given inadequate notice about the Community Action Programme (CAP).
But the judge ruled neither scheme was contrary to article four, and the errors made did not invalidate the 2011 jobseeker’s allowance regulations.
The ruling will come as a relief to the Government. Had it lost today’s legal challenge, it was likely that all back-to-work schemes would have been potentially invalid.
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Utter disgrace
It doesn’t matter if she lost. The companies were exposed for their behaviour
Poundland… Everything’s £1. Except your wages… That’s f**k all!
talk about cheap labour which tory is this judge sucking up to..regards..sandra
just another judge who likes cheap labour
How is this related in any way to disability or Atos assessments?
Because it could be us next? Also the whole DWP machine is exploitative and I think we’re stronger if we all support eachother.
How is threatening to starve someone if they don’t work not forced labour, unless people want to either depend on their familes or steal stuff?
Ut certainly does breach the human rights, but if a judge admitted so? Then the entire wall the gov built to screw us would come tumbling down.
There are very few judges out there willing to take on these legal matters today.
Their own loyaltys dont lie with us, the elites are all in it together and judges reek of wealth and control.
Jury courts are needed, not damn judges, the establishment is the system so what chance do we have pleading to the system thats in it to screw the common man itself.
This whole scenario is telling you straight…..
Even if you are well educated, have a voluntary job that you would be likely to actually gain employment of a good kind, tough shit, abandon the good employment chance and off to shitty poundland, where you have no prospects for a decent future, mentally or financially.
If there was any honsety in what gov say.? They would have left this woman to stay where she was……. She ‘was’ working for free, she was no scrounger nor lazy who sat back doing nothing……
That is what she should have stated in court.
SHE SHOULD HAVE FOUGHT BACK ON THAT CONTRADICTION!
!
Everything’s a pound-including your hourly rate?
I thought there was a legal minimum wage?
I think the hourly rate quip was a sarcastic one hon, there is no way a pound an hour job would be a reality.