[BITList] Fwd: [bep] Grand Chamber Ruling

John Feltham wantok at me.com
Sun Mar 14 12:03:41 GMT 2010



Begin forwarded message:

From: Peter Morris <petermorriscpa at gmail.com>
Date: 14 March 2010 7:46:45 PM AEST
To: bep at yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [bep] Grand Chamber Ruling
Reply-To: bep at yahoogroups.com


Hi Joe

The feeling is “optimistic”.

 Bearing in mind we have lost at every court we have been to so far – the High Court, the Appeal court, the House of Lords and the lower court of the ECHR (where we lost 6-1).

Several (if not all) of the subsequent courts relied on arguments and decisions taken in the previous courts that contained, in my opinion, mis-information.  For example, the Government case is that taxpayers’ money goes into the National Insurance fund each year.  Basically that has not happened since around 1997 when a Treasury top up payment was last needed.  We were able to provide written evidence from the Government’s own sources to support our side on this.

The Government stated that Annette Carson had been provided with the information by the DWP that if she went to South Africa, her pension would be frozen.  She refutes that but it has been part of the Government case all the way along.  Our QC pointed out that even if you are told you are going to be discriminated against, that does not make it right.

I attended the ECHR Grand Chamber hearing on 2nd September 2009 and the questions the judges asked seemed to be supportive of our case.  For example, the Government stated that the cost of uprating all pensions would be £540 million per year.  One judge asked what that was in percentage terms of the total pension bill.  We were able to answer “less than one percent” and the Government side agreed with this.

We were able to introduce written evidence, again, from the Government’s own sources, that there is a surplus in the National Insurance fund which pays out all state pensions, of over £50 billion, so the cost should be affordable.

This latest case, although often described as an appeal, was in fact a re-hearing of all the evidence.  I think our side provided over 500 pages of written arguments and evidence to support our case in addition to the oral submission.  In some ways, I believe we able to anticipate the Government’s arguments and counter that well.

The court wrote to advise of the date the hearing would be handed down (16th March 2101) and asked whether our QC and the 13 applicants would be attending.  I see this with some optimism too.  As far as I know, neither our QC nor any of the 13 applicants will be attending, nor the Government QC.  It was a big enough effort getting almost everyone along to the actual hearing. 

Peter Morris

President

BAPA

 

From: bep at yahoogroups.com [mailto:bep at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Joe Pritchard
Sent: 14 March 2010 03:36
To: bep at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [bep] Grand Chamber Ruling

 

 


What is the"feeling",if any,coming from our legal teams about the outcome of our case
for Pension parity?What about BAPA LEADERS ECT,and Members,any thoughts?
 
                   Regards Joe

 




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