P claimed to be disabled and claimed to be entitled to disability benefits, but the social security commission denied her claim, the statutory test for benefits being whether a person was able to cook their own food regularly. HL held that the test was a broad one, on which the tribunal should take a wide view and make a judgment: it was not a test to be applied with precise arithmetic. Since the tribunal’s decision was a reasonable one, its decision was upheld.
Lord Hoffmann: “In any case in which a tribunal has to apply a standard with a greater or lesser degree of imprecision and to take a number of factors into account, there are bound to be cases in which it will be impossible for a reviewing court to say that the tribunal must have erred in law in deciding the case either way”.
