European Court of Human Rights

FOURTH SECTION

FINAL DECISION

AS TO THE ADMISSIBILITY OF

Application no. 28037/02
by John McGILLEN
against the United Kingdom

The European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section), sitting on 29 April 2008 as a Chamber composed of:

Lech Garlicki, President,
Nicolas Bratza,
Giovanni Bonello,
Ljiljana Mijović,
Ján Šikuta,
Päivi Hirvelä,
Ledi Bianku, judges,
and Lawrence Early, Section Registrar,

Having regard to the above application lodged on 13 September 2001,

Having regard to the partial decision of 12 November 2002,

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

THE FACTS

The applicant, Mr John Mcgillen, is a British national who was born in 1949 and lives in Stoke-on-Trent. He was represented before the Court by Royds Rdw, solicitors in London. The United Kingdom Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent, Mr C. Whomersley of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

A.  The circumstances of the case

The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.

The applicant’s wife died on 11 October 1989. There were two children of the marriage, born on 13 April 1978 and 2 November 1982. In 1997 the applicant applied for widows’ benefits and was refused. On 23 March 2001 he applied to the Benefits Agency for benefits equivalent to those which would have been received by a widow. He was finally refused such benefits by the Social Security Appeal Tribunal on 2 October 2001.

B.  Relevant domestic law

The domestic law relevant to this application is set out in Willis v. the United Kingdom, no. 36042/97, §§ 14 26, ECHR 2002-IV and Runkee and White v. the United Kingdom, no. 42949/98, §§ 40-41, 25 July 2007.

COMPLAINT

The applicant complained that British social security legislation discriminated against him on grounds of sex, in breach of Article 14 of the Convention taken in conjunction with both Article 8 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1.

THE LAW

The Court observes that the complaints brought by the applicant, were the subject of a similar application (no. 77129/01) lodged by him and decided by the Court on 4 April 2006. Consequently, the present application is inadmissible in terms of Article 35 § 2 (b) of the Convention as being substantially the same as that examined in application no.77129/01 and must be rejected pursuant to Article 35 § 4.

For these reasons, the Court unanimously

Decides to declare inadmissible the remainder of the application.

Lawrence Early Lech Garlicki
Registrar President