European Court of Human Rights

FOURTH SECTION

DECISION

AS TO THE ADMISSIBILITY OF

Application no. 31359/02
by Stephen Atkin DONOHOE
against the United Kingdom

The European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section), sitting on 2 September 2008 as a Chamber composed of:

Lech Garlicki, President,
Nicolas Bratza,
Giovanni Bonello,
Ljiljana Mijović,
David Thór Björgvinsson,
Ledi Bianku,
Mihai Poalelungi, judges,

and Fatoş Aracı, Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to the above application lodged on 16 August 2002,

Having regard to the partial decision of 12 November 2002,

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

THE FACTS

The applicant, Mr Stephen Atkin Donohoe, is a British national who was born in 1948 and lives in Gloucestershire. He was represented before the Court by Mr John Dow a solicitor practising in Gloucestershire. 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 9 October 1999. His claim for widows’ benefits, namely Widow’s Payment (“Wpt”) and Widow’s Pension (“WP”), was made on 2 April 2002 and was rejected on 4 April 2002 on the ground that he was not entitled to widows’ benefits because he was not a woman. This decision was confirmed by an appeal tribunal on 24 April 2002. 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 benefits were 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

In its partial decision of 12 November 2002 the Court declared inadmissible the applicant’s claim for Wpt as it had been made out of time.

In relation to the claim for WP, the Court held in its lead judgment regarding WP that at its origin, and until its abolition in respect of women whose spouses died after 9 April 2001, WP was intended to correct “factual inequalities” between older widows, as a group, and the rest of the population and that this difference in treatment was reasonably and objectively justified. Moreover, the Court considered that the United Kingdom could not be criticised for not having abolished WP earlier and that it was not unreasonable of the legislature to decide to introduce the reform slowly (see Runkee and White, cited above, §§ 40-41). The Court, consequently, considering it was not necessary to examine separately the complaint in respect of Article 8, did not find a violation of Article 14 taken in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 in respect of the non-payment to the applicants of Widow’s Pension or equivalent (ibid § 42).

Consequently, this complaint is manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention.

For these reasons, the Court unanimously

Declares inadmissible the remainder of the application.

Fatoş Aracı Lech Garlicki
Deputy Registrar President