Held, appeal dismissed. (1) The former right under article 21 of the FEU Treaty to move and reside freely within the territory of EU member states was replaced, at the end of the transition period under the Withdrawal Agreement, with a more limited right to reside (but not to move) conferred by article 13 of that agreement on those within its personal scope, which right was limited to residence in the host state. However, the language of article 13 showed that the right was intended to be a form of the previous article 21 right and, while there were differences in the mechanisms and modalities by which the rights could be exercised and lost, none of those differences were relevant to the claimant’s case. The claimant, as a person with pre-settled status, therefore retained after the end of the transition period that part of her bundle of article 21 rights which entitled her to continue to reside in the UK, which right continued to generate legal effects even when the residence did not comply with the conditions in Parliament and Council Directive 2004/38/EC on the free movement of Union citizens and their family members (paras 100–102).

(2) Since article 4(3) of the Withdrawal Agreement required that the provisions of that agreement “referring to Union law or to concepts or provisions thereof” were to be “interpreted and applied in accordance with the methods and general principles of Union law”, and since the definition of “Union law” in article 2 included the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, it followed that parties were required to act compatibly with any Charter or fundamental rights relevant to the situation, whenever they were “applying” (as well as when “interpreting”) the Withdrawal Agreement. The UK had been acting within the scope of article 21 of the FEU Treaty when it granted the claimant a domestic law right of residence on terms more favourable than required by Directive 2004/38 and had been “applying” her modified article 21 right to reside (as conferred by articles 10 and 13 of the Withdrawal Agreement) when determining her application for universal credit, that being an application for the social assistance necessary to make the right effective. Since both articles 10 and 13 referred to provisions or concepts of EU law, by virtue of article 4(3) the Secretary of State could only refuse the claimant’s application for universal credit to the extent that doing so was compatible with her Charter rights. That position was confirmed by a consideration of article 4(1) of the Withdrawal Agreement which pointed unmistakably to an intention that the agreement was to produce, more generally, the same legal effects in the UK as in the EU and its member states, in accordance with the aim of reciprocity which was a principal purpose of the Withdrawal Agreement (paras 105–108, 110).

(3) The provision of support for a person’s “most basic needs” was a matter falling within the scope of the principle of human dignity enshrined in article 1 of the Charter. While these would vary from person to person and might be context-dependent, they would typically include housing (including a basic level of heating adequate for a person’s health), food, clothing and hygiene. An individualised assessment, undertaken by reference to the facts of the claimant’s case, was required to determine whether the refusal of universal credit would prevent a claimant with pre-settled status from living in dignified conditions. The requirement to conduct an assessment applied in all such cases and did not arise only where the claimant was in a “vulnerable” situation. However, the assessment did not need to be a sophisticated or lengthy one and, in many cases, if there was nothing preventing the claimant from working that would provide a complete answer to the claim or, in other cases, it might be obvious that there was some other source of state support to which the claimant actually and currently had access and which was sufficient to meet their most basic needs. In the context of an application for social assistance such as universal credit, the assessment had to be directed to ensuring that refusal did not expose the people concerned to an “actual and current risk” of a violation of their rights as set out in the identified provisions of the Charter. While the assessment of a “risk” was necessarily forward-looking, the requirement that the risk be “actual and current” meant that risks which were contingent on future adverse events the occurrence of which could not be predicted with confidence were likely to be too remote. Conversely, an “actual and current risk” might remain even where there was a potential source of support that might become available only at some time in the future. While the other forms of state support which could be taken into account were not restricted to those to which the claimant was entitled as of right, and could include support available under national law on a discretionary basis, for discretionary support to be taken into account there had to be confidence that the support would “actually and currently” be made available, determined as a question of fact, and a source of public support which could only be accessed (if at all) after prolonged application processes, and potentially after bringing legal proceedings or invoking other dispute resolution mechanisms, was to be disregarded. In light of the foregoing, the First-tier Tribunal had made no error of law in concluding, on the evidence, that an award of universal credit was necessary in order to avoid the risk of violation of the claimant’s Charter rights (paras 116, 117, 125–131, 144, 145, 146, 150, 151, 154, 155).