The High Court has found that there was no indirect age discrimination in relation to rules about a widow’s pension under the police pension scheme.
Facts
Mr Eric Carter served as a police officer from November 1948 and retired on 28 February 1977. He married his second wife in 1981 and they have remained married for 38 years.
The police pension scheme offers the widow of a retired police officer a pension upon the officer’s death. This benefit was originally only payable if the widow was married to the police officer at the time when he was in the police service. This was later changed so that pensions were payable to post-retirement widows in respect of police service after 5 April 1978. However, since Mr Carter retired before 1978, no pension was payable to his second wife.
The Carters argued that this was unlawful. One of their arguments was that the rule excluding post-retirement widows indirectly discriminates against Mr Carter on the grounds of age. They argued that a retired officer in his 90s is more likely than an officer in his 60s to have remarried. The rule excluding post-retirement widows was a provision, criterion or practice (“PCP”) which put older officers at a disadvantage compared to younger officers.
Decision
The High Court dismissed the indirect age discrimination claim.
The Court accepted that the rule was a PCP that was applied neutrally to the cases of all officers employed before 1978.
However, Mr Carter had failed to prove that the PCP put him and other men over the age of 90 at a particular disadvantage. The Court compared the remarriage rates among men who are now in their 90s with those who are now in their 60s (the youngest group that could have been in service before 1978). The changes in divorce rates since 1925 meant that the remarriage rate of the younger group was actually higher than that of the older group. This was the same if the comparison was with men in their 70s. The statistics showed the opposite of what was being argued by Mr Carter.
As the PCP did not put Mr Carter and other men over 90 at a disadvantage, there was no need for the Court to go on to consider whether the rule was a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
The judgment is available here.
Carter & Anor v The Chief Constable of Essex Police [2020] EWHC 77 (21 January 2020)