The EAT required a Tribunal to reconsider its finding that direct age discrimination in access to a car lease scheme was justified, because they took account of an issue that had not been argued by the parties.
Facts
Mr McGonagle was a manager at Jaguar Land Rover Limited (JLR) and took voluntary redundancy when he was 54 years old. He wanted to access the Retired Managers Loan Agreement Plan (RMLAP) which gave managers the right to retain membership of JLR’s lease car scheme. The RMLAP scheme was only available to managers of 55 or over (unless a manager was retiring with immediate entitlement to a company pension).
Mr McGonagle argued that the age requirement of 55 years was discriminatory and could not be objectively justified.
The Employment Tribunal (ET) found that the age requirement was direct age discrimination, but it was justified as a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. Part of the rationale for this decision was the need to ensure parity of treatment between members of two different JLR pension schemes.
Mr McGonagle asked the ET to reconsider this decision because it had mistakenly assumed that members of the two different pension schemes would have been treated differently in relation to the provisions of the RMLAP. This application was rejected by the ET. Mr McGonagle appealed this decision to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT).
Decision
The EAT concluded that the ET had decided the case on the basis of something that had not been argued by JLR as a legitimate aim. By the time of the redundancy exercise, all relevant staff members, regardless of the pension scheme they were in, would be entitled to retire at 55 with the benefit of RMLAP. This meant that concerns about parity of treatment between members of different pension schemes was not relevant to the decision to limit the RMLAP to managers over 55 who were being made redundant.
The judge had mistakenly viewed the application for reconsideration as an attempt to reargue the case. The decision was sent back to the ET to be reconsidered.
The judgment is available here.
McGonagle v Jaguar Land Rover Ltd [2023] EAT 24 (22 November 2022)