The court also found that the Government had breached its duty of candour by not disclosing during the first hearing that it had already made a policy decision to stop more severely disabled people from being moved onto the new benefit system, and to provide transitional payments for those that already had.

AR said: “We hope that the Court of Appeal ruling will finally bring an end to our fight for severely disabled people not to be disadvantaged by Universal Credit.

“It is still so shocking to us that we have had to fight so long and so hard just to get the government to see that their policy is unfair.”

Tessa Gregory, from law firm Leigh Day added: “Today’s finding that thousands of severely disabled people have been subject to unlawful discrimination should be a wake-up call for the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.