Judges’ pension scheme ageist

Judges were discriminated against on the grounds of age by changes to their pension scheme, the Court of Appeal has held.

About 230 judges, including six High Court judges, had claimed they were treated less favourably than older judges when a revised judicial pension scheme took effect in April 2015. Older judges who were closer to retirement age were protected by transitional measures. Younger judges suffered losses amounting to about £30,000 for High Court judges and hundreds of thousands of pounds for more senior judges. Their claims were previously upheld by the employment tribunal and Employment Appeal Tribunal.

The judgment, in Lord Chancellor v McCloud and Mostyn & Ors [2018] EWCA Civ 2844, was conjoined with a firefighters’ pensions case, Sargeant v London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority & Ors [2018] EWCA Civ 2844. In both cases, the government argued that the age discrimination was justified.

Shubha Banerjee, partner at Leigh Day, said: ‘Many public sector workers including judges had been working towards and planning for their retirement based on membership of their former pension scheme, only for those plans to be completely disregarded once the government’s discriminatory changes were brought in. We do hope that the Ministry of Justice will recognise the fact that three courts have now found its actions discriminatory and will take steps to resolve this matter as quickly as possible.’

Leigh Day said that the judgment was likely to have an impact on other public sector groups who have seen similar changes to their pension scheme, such as police officers.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said it was seeking permission to appeal. If unsuccessful, the Ministry may need to pay out as much as £100m from an already stretched budget to remedy the judges’ losses.