United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MR TIM EICKE (of Counsel) Instructed by: Mr R Karim Legal Officer Justice 59 Carter lane London EC4V 5AQ
For the Respondents	MR RAYMOND HILL (of Counsel) Office of the Solicitor Department of Social Security Pensions Branch Room 418 New Court 48 Carey Street London WC2A 2LS


 


MR JUSTICE MORISON (PRESIDENT): This is an appeal against an Industrial Tribunal's decision. The Notice of Appeal raises a number of points of principle and without expressing any view as to its prospects of success, I am satisfied that were this matter to have come before the Employment Appeal Tribunal at a preliminary hearing, it would have been adjudged a case suitable for a full hearing. Accordingly, in the special circumstances of this case, I am prepared to dispense with the preliminary hearing and direct that it goes to a full hearing.

The case concerns the pension entitlement of a partner of a person who is going in due course to be entitled to a pension and whether the partner, who has changed his/her sex, will be entitled to the surviving widow's or widower's pension.

There was no evidence before the Industrial Tribunal and the parties have effectively agreed the directions which they invite me to make. I now make them.

The first is that there should be a simultaneous exchange of Counsel's skeleton arguments three weeks before the date fixed for the hearing. Secondly, that there should be a bundle of authorities including extracts from the relevant pension regulations prepared and lodged with the Employment Appeal Tribunal with sufficient copies to enable them to be sent to the lay members and to the judge in charge of the case.

This appeal should be listed for two days. I think it is probable that the argument may finish in one day, but the second day will enable the Employment Appeal Tribunal to discuss amongst themselves what the result should be and perhaps to start to prepare the judgment. It should be listed as Category A because obviously the implications of this case are wide-ranging.

The only other point I want to deal with on this directions hearing relates to the title of these proceedings. The position is that for obvious reasons the Industrial Tribunal was wishing to preserve the confidentiality arising from the sensitivities of the issues in this case. Accordingly throughout the whole of those proceedings the applicants were referred to under the letters KB.

The position in law, as I understand it, is that absent a Restricted Reporting Order, so far as the decision of the Industrial Tribunal is concerned, it should have contained the full names of the parties; and so far as the Employment Appeal Tribunal is concerned, I have to say that despite awareness of the sensitivities, this case must be listed under its full title: that is the identity of the applicant or applicants will be disclosed on our lists. There is no Restricted Reporting Order in force, and no application made to us that we should have a Restricted Reporting Order for the hearing of the appeal. Accordingly, the normal rule must prevail. For this purpose if the Employment Appeal Tribunal is not already informed, the parties must inform this tribunal of the identity of the applicant/applicants.

I will not say anything about the listing of the case because it seems to me that that will have to be agreed with the Listing Office in the light of the directions order I have just made. But I think I can say that it is probably unlikely to come on before January 1999.

If you have gone into the preliminary hearing system, the normal position is that it takes about six to eight weeks for a preliminary hearing to take place as we are presently working. The summer causes a bit of a problem as the Employment Appeal Tribunal does not sit in August, but that is broadly speaking, so. In a sense, you are coming on rather more quickly as a result of avoiding the preliminary hearing stage than you would have done if we had had to go through it.