CP_1425_2007
If you found BAILII useful today, could you please make a contribution?
Your donation will help us maintain and extend our databases of legal information. No contribution is too small. If every visitor this month donates, it will have a significant impact on BAILII's ability to continue providing free access to the law.
Thank you very much for your support!
[2008] UKSSCSC CP_1425_2007 (13 March 2008)
ToC: DJM, PLH, EAJ Commissioner's File: CP 1425/07 (heard with CP 2862/07 & CSP 503/07)
SOCIAL SECURITY ACTS 1992-1998
APPEAL FROM DECISION OF APPEAL TRIBUNAL
ON A QUESTION OF LAW
DECISION OF A TRIBUNAL OF SOCIAL SECURITY COMMISSIONERS
Claim for: Retirement Pension
Appeal Tribunal: Lancaster
Tribunal Case Ref: 067/06/00234
Tribunal date: 16 February 2007
Reasons issued: 16 March 2007
[ORAL HEARING]
Introduction
Factual history
Claim history
"Please be informed of the following changes in my personal circumstances.
1. Change of address: [details omitted]
2. Change of name: Mr [_______] To be known as Ms [_______] wef 1/7/94.
3. Marital status:- Divorced. (No dependants)
4. All other details remain the same.
Yours faithfully"
"Due to a change in your circumstances your State Pension has been revised.
Your claim has been looked at again. It has been decided that you are only entitled to a State Pension at £97.79 a week from 9 May 2005. This change has affected your additional State Pension. ... Because you were in an Employer's Pension Scheme, the change in the insurance record also affects the amount we take away from your additional State Pension. ... The decision about your State Pension explained in this letter takes the place of anything else we may have told you about your State Pension. You have been entitled to the amount shown since the date in the first section ..."
"I am a transsexual woman and have been living permanently as a woman since 22/06/94. I reached the age of 60 on the 1st July 1994 but at that time did not make a claim for state pension having been advised that I would be unsuccessful.
On the 7th September 1994 I received a letter ... stating that although I had told the DSS of my change of lifestyle I WOULD NOT be getting my OAP until I was aged 65 in 1999 as I was still legally regarded as a male. ...
I now wish to apply for my pension to be backdated to 1st July 1994 when I reached the age of 60yrs, in light of the recent decision of the European Court of Justice in the case of Sarah Margaret Richards v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Case C-423/04) ECJ 27-04-06".
"Decision – Type – reconsideration. Effect on benefit – not changed. [The claimant] is not entitled to State Pension from 1st July 1994 to 30th June 1999 (both dates included). This is because there is a time limit for claiming all benefits including State Pension. The time limit for claiming State Pension is 12 months, from the date of 1st July 1994 (ending on 1st July 1995). Therefore as more than 12 months have elapsed since [the claimant]'s 60th birthday the claim is out of time and disallowed."
The terms of that decision were notified to the claimant in a decision letter dated 18 August 2006 (3-4), which also referred to the substantive arguments on human rights and European law underlying the application, stating the department's understanding that it remained the case that a male to female transsexual could not have become entitled to state retirement pension under the male pensionable age of 65 before the Gender Recognition Act came into force on 4 April 2005.
"Claims for State Pension are dealt with in accordance with the procedures provided for in the Gender Recognition Act. Any claim made and decided before domestic legislation ie the Gender Recognition Act, permitted a female transsexual to be regarded as such, cannot be re-decided because of that legislation as it was not retrospective. ...
There can be no entitlement to State Pension unless a claim is made. Where no claim was made at age 60, the claim was made after the time for claiming ... The date a claim is made cannot be altered retrospectively by supersession once the claim has been decided ...
In your particular case, as there was no claim made to State Pension at age 60, the claim was made after the time for claiming ... Therefore, once the date of claim is made it cannot be altered retrospectively by supersession once the claim has been decided (for claims made at age 65)."
"The tribunal found that Richards can be distinguished on its facts from those of the appellant in that Richards dealt with both what might be described as a current claim for pension and the claim to entitlement arose prior to the implementation of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 ("the Act")...
Section 9 of the Act provides that upon the grant of a full certificate a person's gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender though this does not affect things done or events occurring before the certificate is issued ...
The tribunal found that for the purposes of the judgment of the court in Richards (at paragraph 21) section 9 of the Act imposes a condition on the acquisition of gender in that it operates to govern or determine the circumstances under which legal recognition is given. That is to say that (presumably) to maintain certainty of decision making the grant of a certificate will not affect decisions or things done in the past. At the time the appellant approached the Pensions Service in 1994 the settled position in law was that pension entitlement was governed by birth gender. When the appellant again approached the Pensions Service in May 2006 the position had then been settled by the Act and as set out above section 9 precludes a challenge against things done in 1994. For these reasons the tribunal found that the case of Richards does not assist the appellant."
The legal context
"17. - (1) Subject to the provisions of this Chapter, any decision made in accordance with the foregoing provisions of this Chapter shall be final; ..."
(1) by regulation 3(5)(a) a decision may be revised under section 9 if it "arose from an official error", and in that case there is no modification of the rule in the section itself that the revision has effect back to the same date as the original decision. However the scope of this power is confined by the definition in regulation 1(3) of what counts as an "official error" for this purpose, as:
" 'official error' means an error made by ... an officer of the Department for Work and Pensions ... acting as such which no person outside the Department ... caused or to which no person outside the Department ... materially contributed; ...
but excludes any error of law which is shown to have been an error of law by virtue of a subsequent decision of a Commissioner or the court;"
(2) by regulation 6(2)(a) and (b) a decision may be superseded by another decision of the Secretary of State under section 10 if (a) there has been a relevant change of circumstances since the original decision took effect; or (b) the original decision was erroneous in point of law. By regulation 7 a superseding decision for change of circumstances under (a) may take effect from the date of the change, or the date it is notified if the notification is late, but never earlier; and for a superseding decision on the ground of error of law under (b) there is no relevant provision for the corrective award to be given effect from any earlier date than that provided in section 10, namely that of the superseding decision itself or the application for it.
(1) First, by paragraph 7 ("Category A retirement pension"):
"7 (1) Any question -
(a) whether the person is entitled to a Category A retirement pension (under section 44 of the 1992 Act) for any period after the certificate is issued, and
(b) (if so) the rate at which the person is so entitled for the period,
is to be decided as if the person's gender had always been the acquired gender. ...
(4) But sub-paragraph (1) does not apply if and to the extent that the decision of any question to which it refers is affected by -
(a) the payment or crediting of any contributions, or the crediting of earnings, in respect of a period ending before the certificate is issued, ...."
(2) Second, by paragraph 7(5) and paragraph 10 ("Deferment of pensions"):
"10. (1) The person's entitlement to -
(a) a Category A retirement pension, ...
is not to be taken to have been deferred for any period ending before the certificate is issued unless the condition in sub-paragraph (2) is satisfied.
(2) The condition is that the entitlement both -
(a) was actually deferred during the period, and
(b) would have been capable of being so deferred had the person's gender been the acquired gender."
Arguments on the appeal
Conclusions
(1) he should first determine the date from which the claimant first became entitled to equal treatment under the Directive. There being no other relevant conditions unmet before she attained the age of 60, this will be the date when she first met the condition of having lived in her acquired gender for the continuous period of two years: 22 June 1996, if the date given in her letter of 8 May 2006 was the correct one; or 28 April 1995 if the earlier date we were given in argument can be accepted;
(2) he should next calculate the appropriate percentage increase for deferment of retirement pension by a woman from that date to 5 July 1999, the actual starting date of the claimant's pension which remains unaltered;
(3) he should then reconsider what was done when the amount of the claimant's pension award was altered from 9 May 2005, and determine whether the decision notified to her on 15 June 2005 wrongly failed to give effect to paragraph 7(4) of Schedule 5 to the Gender Recognition Act; in which case the award must be revised for official error in accordance with the directions in paragraph 43 above so as to correct both that and the error in not recognising her equal treatment rights, both with effect from 9 May 2005;
(4) unless revised under (3), the decision notified on 15 June 2005 on the rate of the claimant's pension award from 9 May 2005 is to be superseded by virtue of this decision so as to correct the error of law in not recognising her equal treatment rights, with effect from the date of the application of 11 May 2006;
(5) in either case the corrective pension award is to include from its effective date:
(a) as regards the basic element of the pension, the percentage increase determined under (2); and
(b) as regards the additional (earnings-related) element of the pension, whichever is the better of
(i) that percentage increase; and
(ii) any extra pension attributable to the operation of paragraph 7(4) Schedule 5 to the Gender Recognition Act for periods after the claimant was 60;
(but not both, because that would involve an element of double benefit for periods after 60 and more than required under the Directive for equal treatment).
(Signed)
D J May QC
P L Howell QC
E A Jupp
Commissioners
13 March 2008