Pensions and Retirement in UK Law

It seems clear from Stec, however, that the normally strict test for justification of sex discrimination in the enjoyment of the Convention rights gives way to the "manifestly without reasonable foundation" test in the context of state benefits. The same principles were applied to the sex discrimination involved in denying widow's pensions to men in Runkee v United Kingdom [2007] 2 FCR 178, para 36.

Very many of the expatriate UK pensioners who do not receive uprated pensions have a strong and understandable sense of grievance. They paid their contributions calculated in the same way as pensioners now living here and in, say, the USA, yet they do not receive the same pension. They feel that they have been deprived of an increasingly substantial part of the fruit of their contributions. The real value, at least in the UK, of their pensions is declining from year to year.

It is generally recognised that pensionable employment is more valuable to a man than the mere amount of his weekly wage. It is more valuable because by reason of the terms of his employment money is being regularly set aside to swell his ultimate pension rights whether on retirement or on disablement. The products of the sums paid into the pension fund are in fact delayed remuneration for his current work.

If this prerequisite is satisfied, the essential question for the court is whether the alleged discrimination, that is, the difference in treatment of which complaint is made, can withstand scrutiny. There may be such an obvious, relevant difference between the claimant and those with whom he seeks to compare himself that their situations cannot be regarded as analogous.

The need to protect certain classes of pension benefits from the claims of creditors has been recognised by Parliament for at least 130 years. Where it has thought it right to provide such protection, Parliament has enacted that an assignment of the pension rights shall be void. Examples are found in the Naval and Marine Pay and Pensions Act 1865, in the Army Act 1955 and, now, in the Superannuation Act 1972.

However, it may be said that this leaves the true relation between questions (iii) and (iv) unresolved. A possible approach, as it seems to me, is to ask a compendious question in place of (iii): are the circumstances of X and Y so similar as to call (in the mind of a rational and fair-minded person) for a positive justification for the less favourable treatment of Y in comparison with X?

In the field of what may be called macro-economic policy, certainly including the distribution of public funds upon retirement pensions, the decision-making power of the elected arms of government is all but at its greatest, and the constraining role of the courts, absent a florid violation by government of established legal principles, is correspondingly modest. I conceive this approach to be wholly in line with our responsibilities under the Human Rights Act 1998.