3.—(1) Subject to paragraphs (2) to (4), any payment of income support which falls to be made to an offender in respect of any week in the disqualification period, or to an offender’s family member in respect of any week in the relevant period, shall be reduced—
(a)where the claimant or a member of his family is pregnant or seriously ill, by a sum equivalent to 20 per cent.;
(b)where the applicable amount of the offender used to calculate that payment of income support has been reduced pursuant to regulation 22A of the Income Support Regulations(1) (appeal against a decision embodying an incapacity for work determination), whether or not the appeal referred to in that regulation is successful, by a sum equivalent to 20 per cent.;
(c)in any other case, by a sum equivalent to 40 per cent.,
of the applicable amount of the offender in respect of a single claimant for income support on the first day of the disqualification period or, as the case may be, on the first day of the relevant period, and specified in paragraph 1(1) of Schedule 2 to the Income Support Regulations.
(2) Payment shall not be reduced under paragraph (1) to below 10 pence per week.
(3) A reduction under paragraph (1) shall, if it is not a multiple of 5p, be rounded to the nearest such multiple or, if it is a multiple of 2.5p but not of 5p, to the next lower multiple of 5p.
(4) A payment of income support shall not be reduced as provided in paragraph (1) in respect of any week in the disqualification period in respect of which that payment of income support is subject to a restriction imposed pursuant to section 62 or 63 of the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000 (loss of benefit provisions).
(5) Where the rate of income support payable to an offender or an offender’s family member changes, the rules set out above for a reduction in the benefit payable shall be applied to the new rate and any adjustment to the reduction shall take effect from the first day of the first benefit week to start after the date of the change.
(6) In this regulation, “benefit week” shall have the same meaning as in regulation of 2(1) of the Income Support Regulations(2).
4. In respect of any part of the disqualification period when section 8(2) of the Act does not apply, the reduced rate of joint-claim jobseeker’s allowance payable to the member of that couple who is not the offender shall be—
(a)in any case in which the member of the couple who is not the offender satisfies the conditions set out in section 2 of the Jobseekers Act (contribution-based conditions), a rate equal to the amount calculated in accordance with section 4(1) of that Act;
(b)in any case where the couple are a couple in hardship for the purposes of regulation 11, a rate equal to the amount calculated in accordance with regulation 16;
(c)in any other case, a rate calculated in accordance with section 4(3A) of the Jobseekers Act(3) save that the applicable amount shall be the amount determined by reference to paragraph 1(1) of Schedule 1 to the Jobseeker’s Allowance Regulations as if the member of the couple who is not the offender were a single claimant.
Regulation 22A was inserted by S.I. 1996/206 and amended by S.I. 1999/2422, 1999/3109 and 2000/590.
The definition was amended by S.I. 1988/1445.
Section 4(3A) was inserted by section 59 of, and paragraph 5(3) of Schedule 7 to, the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999 (c. 30).