Supreme Court Awards Dependant's Pension

There has been much press coverage of the Supreme Court's decision to award a pension to the long-term partner of a member of Northern Ireland's Local Government Pension Scheme. Andrew Patten looks at the implications of the judgment for other pension schemes.

What the case was about

Under Northern Ireland's Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), Mrs Brewster was entitled to a pension on the death of her partner, Mr McMullan, if she could establish they had been living together as if married and were financially interdependent for at least two years. This she did. However, a further condition was that Mr McMullan had provided a declaration, signed by both of them, that they met these requirements. Unfortunately, he had failed to do this and the LGPS refused to pay Mrs Brewster a pension.

Mrs Brewster challenged the decision that she should be denied a pension simply because her partner had failed to fill in a form.

The court's decision

Mrs Brewster challenged the decision through a judicial review. She argued the decision infringed her rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). One of these is a right not to be deprived of possessions, a right which has to be applied without discrimination, unless the discrimination can be objectively justified - that is, the discrimination has a legitimate aim and is a proportionate way of achieving that aim. The parties accepted that the right to a survivor's pension under the LGPS was covered by the ECHR and the court was asked to decide the narrow issue of whether the discriminatory requirement for cohabitees (but not married members) to provide a declaration was objectively justified.

The court decided that the objective of the LGPS providing co-habitees with a pension is to avoid unjustified discrimination between cohabiting members in long-term relationships and members who are married or in a civil partnership. The court decided there was no legitimate reason to require a declaration from cohabitees (but not married members) as this added nothing to the requirement to provide proof of long-standing cohabitation and financial interdependence. It rejected the position of the Court of Appeal that a declaration acted as a crucial public statement about the nature of the member's relationship, similar to a marriage/civil partnership certificate.

Implications for pension schemes

Mainstream media headlines have given the impression that the decision paves the way for cohabitees to be...