United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MR RONALD GEORGE (Representative)


 


JUDGE WILKIE QC:

1. This is an appeal by Mrs George against an order of the Employment Tribunal Chairman sitting in Southampton on 16 May 2001, which struck out her complaint that she had been excluded from membership of her erstwhile employer's pension scheme because she was a part-time worker, her erstwhile employers being East Sussex County Council and the Secretary of State for the Environment Transport and the Regions.
2. Mrs George had presented a complaint on 25 July 2000 that she had been excluded from the pension scheme by reason of her status as a part-time worker. As a result of decisions of the European Court of Justice and the House of Lords, it has now been established that this exclusion was potentially indirectly discriminatory on the grounds of her sex. Unfortunately for Mrs George these decisions also made clear that the time limit for making her complaint was not to be extended in order to accommodate claims made only after these rulings had been made. The fact is that Mrs George ceased her employment with the respondents as long ago as 24 April 1992 and the time limit within which a complaint such as she wishes to make is, by statute, a period of six months from the ending of the employment relationship in question. There is no provision for extending that limit in any circumstances. Therefore, the Employment Tribunal, having received her complaint on 25 July 2000, was faced with an application which, upon the face of it, was out of time by a considerable margin.
3. In accordance with procedures which have been adopted to deal with the large number of claims to which these rulings might well give rise, a letter of 27 April 2001 was sent to Mrs George inviting her to show cause why her complaint should not be struck out. She did not succeed in showing the tribunal such reason and therefore the Chairman ordered that her complaint should be struck out and did so under the powers given to him by Rule 13(2)(d) of the tribunal rules.
4. Mr George has, very courteously and effectively, represented his wife today and has put forward arguments, essentially arguments which one would think were great common sense, namely that she had enquired back in the late 1980s whether she might have access to the scheme and, in particular, exercise an option to buy back scheme entry to 1 April 1986. The information that she was given at the time was information that the scheme was not available to her and, unsurprisingly, she accepted that situation and did not herself at that time launch proceedings making the complaint which she now makes.
5. Mr George argues, again with great common sense, that it seems a little odd to say that she should have made a claim when she had no sensible means of knowing that she had it, because the decision which revealed that she had the claim was not made until many years later. Unfortunately, that is the law. She did have the grievance. She could have made the claim as, indeed, somebody eventually did. The fact that the claim which was made was made too late to benefit her is, in a sense, hard luck but, unfortunately, the law is very clear in this respect and our hands are tied and therefore, notwithstanding the attractive argument that has been presented to us, we are constrained to conclude that this is an appeal that has no reasonable prospect of success and therefore it must be dismissed at this stage.