European Court of Human Rights

FOURTH SECTION

FINAL DECISION

AS TO THE ADMISSIBILITY OF

Application no. 8931/03
by Henry PATTERSON
against the United Kingdom

The European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section), sitting on 9 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 Lawrence Early, Section Registrar,

Having regard to the above application lodged on 25 February 2003,

Having regard to the partial decision of 23 September 2003,

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

THE FACTS

The applicant, Mr Henry Patterson, is a British national who was born in 1942 and lives in Liverpool. He was represented before the Court by Mr J. Benton, a Member of Parliament for a constituency in Liverpool. 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 25 July 1986, leaving two dependant children. His claim for widows’ benefits was made on 11 July 2002 and was rejected on 16 July 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 10 February 2003. 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.

The applicant was not in receipt of child benefit at the time of his claim.

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 recalls that a widow was not automatically entitled to survivors’ benefits, but had to claim them from the relevant authority. Various time-limits applied: before 1997, a widow had to make a claim for Widow’s Payment (“Wpt”) within three months of her husband’s death; a claim for Widowed Mother’s Allowance (“WMA”) or Widow’s Pension (“WP”) could be made outside that time-limit, but would be back-dated only three months. To be eligible for WMA, a woman had to be entitled to child benefit.

Consequently, in its partial decision of 23 September 2003 the Court declared inadmissible the applicant’s claim for Wpt as it had been made out of time.

In respect of WMA the Court observes that the applicant was not in receipt of child benefit at the time of his claim. Consequently, he could not claim to be a victim of discrimination, since a woman in the same position would not have been entitled to the benefit in question (see, mutatis mutandis, Rogan v. the United Kingdom (dec.), no. 57946/00, 8 September 2001). Thus, the applicant cannot claim to have been a victim of a violation of his rights under the Convention and Protocol, and the complaint in respect of WMA is incompatible ratione personae with the provisions of the Convention and must be declared inadmissible in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention.

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.

Lawrence Early Lech Garlicki
Registrar President