Got a statement of reasons for a tribunal decision today, 4 months after asking for it and generally a dogs breakfast but I don't know what to make of one line in it. "It was noted that the appeal submission was different from the appeal by the claimant at page E2 in the appeal pack." Why is this noteworthy?

were they talking about your appeal submission or the department's?

i can only guess that either they noticed that the official submission failed to address the points raised in the appeal letter, and decided to mention it for a change, or...

your argument was different to the points raised in the letter of appeal, which proves it, doesn't it? : )

They were talking about my submission. Her appeal letter was written without advice so she just generally said she had problems with bending, sitting, lifting and carrying and a few other things. When we went through everything it turned out that only a couple of descriptors were in issue and these were the only ones mentioned in the submission with a bit of an analysis of the EMP report and argument about the conclusions to be drawn from some sparse GP evidence.

I don't know why it was noteworthy or what inference the Tribunal could or would have drawn from the differences.
All my submissions vary from the GL24 because when that form is submitted I don't always have ALL the information to hand. When the cl submits their own GL24 they tend to concentrate on what they feel as key areas which might not always be the areas in question. Plus you only have 28 days to submit a GL24 whereas a detailed submission can be done at your leisure (I use the term loosely).

Most tribunals in my experience pay close attention to the wording of the original "grounds of appeal". Indeed many tribunals use it as a starting point. It's not difficult to see why because it will guide their response to the issue of whether an issue is raised at the appeal or not.

To avoid misunderstanding I always include a statement on the original appeal grounds along the lines of
...."we reserve the right to add to or change the grounds of appeal in resonse to the submission of the decision maker" .

This statement is not needed of course but enables you to justify almost anything including conflicting points (providing you have the evidence or authority to back it of course).

I always deliberately keep fairly vague on the appeal form in disability/incapacity cases becaue you haven't seen all the evidence at this stage.

It looks like the Tribunal may have misdirected itself about its role as an inquisitorial body. An alleged discrepancy such as you describe would only be an issue in proceedings where the adjudicating body operated on adversarial principes (eg proceedings in the County Court/Sherrif Court).

So for example, my understanding is that failure to mention key issues in the early stages of civil litigation and to raise them later in the actual hearing may be significant.

There are several Commissioners Decisions (and House of Lords in Kerr) about the inquistorial nature of Tribunals and failure to operate as an inquisitorial body can give grounds for appeal to Commissioner. There's some useful guidance in the notes to S12(2) Social Security Act 1998 in Rowland and White (p 212 of 2005 edition).

Hope this helps.

This wasn't a tax credit appeal by any chance? If it was, then TC appeals are generally limited to the original grounds unless it was not reasonable to have included the additional grounds at an earlier stage. Or at least that is my understanding of it as I have never actually dealt with this point at appeal. Otherwise it does not appear very relavent unless it was a comment about the credibility of evidence.

Not tax credits, it was an IB PCA. I did wonder if it was something to do with credibility but the chairman did not mention it during the hearing. The decision errs in enough other ways for this not to be very important but I am concerned if a tribunal chairman is questioning my integrity, since I wrote that submission. I might be getting the wrong end of the stick though, the english is a bit poor throughout: a bit of bad wording makes it appear that they reached the conclusions after clinical examination!