European Court of Human Rights

FOURTH SECTION

FINAL DECISION

AS TO THE ADMISSIBILITY OF

Application no. 69076/01
by Henry KELLY
against the United Kingdom

The European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section), sitting on 29 April 2007 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 3 May 2001,

Having regard to the partial decision of 10 September 2002, inter alia, to join these applications to other applications (nos. 58372/00, 61878/00, 63477/00, 63480/00, 63647/00, 63961/00, 64986/01, 64996/01, 65202/01, 65478/01, 65507/01, 65741/01, 65906/01, 66181/01, 67100/01, 67913/01, 68173/01, 68175/01, 68264/01, 68298/01, 68449/01, 69076/01, 69323/01, 69327/01, 69491/01, 70521/01, 70741/01, 71176/01, 71428/01, 71429/01, 71570/01, 71758/01, 73646/01, 73653/01, 73978/01, 74961/01, 75092/01, 75126/01, 75993/01, 75995/01, 77129/01, 77424/01, 682/02, 2573/02, 4810/02, 10747/02, 13944/02, 14404/02 and 14537/02),

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

THE FACTS

The applicant, Mr Henry Kelly, is a British national who was born in and lives in Magherafelt. He was represented before the Court by the Law Centre, Belfast. 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 14 August 1992. They had no children from the marriage. On 29 May 2000 the applicant applied for widows’ benefits. On 2 June 2000 the applicant was informed that his claim had been disallowed. The applicant appealed on 13 June 2000. On 6 November 2000 the Tribunal confirmed that the decision remained unchanged. The applicant did not appeal further as he considered or was advised that such a remedy would be bound to fail since no such social security benefit was payable to widowers under United Kingdom law.

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

On 10 January 2007 the applicant’s representatives informed the Court that they had no objections to the case being struck out of the list of cases since it only concerned a complaint regarding entitlement to a Widow’s Pension which had already been decided by the Court in the case of Runkee and White (cited above). On 1 February 2008 the Registry of the Court sent the applicant a letter stating that following his request, the Court would consider striking the application out of its list.

In the light of the above, in accordance with Article 37 § 1 (a) of the Convention, the Court considers that the applicant does not intend to pursue his application. Furthermore, the Court finds no special circumstances regarding respect for human rights as defined in the Convention or its Protocols which require the continuation of the examination of the application.

Accordingly, the remainder of the application should be struck out of the Court’s list of cases.

For these reasons, the Court unanimously

Decides to disjoin the application from the others to which it was joined;

Decides to strike the remainder of the application out of its list of cases.

Lawrence Early Lech Garlicki
Registrar President