Sex - statute providing for payment of widow's bereavement allowance to widows but not widowers incompatible with widowers' convention rights - widower not entitled to payment

R (Wilkinson) v Inland Revenue Comrs: CA (Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, Master of the Rolls, Lords Justice Mantell and Rix): 18 June 2003

The claimant was a widower whose wife had died at a time when widow's bereavement allowance was paid to widows under section 262 of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988 (an allowance abolished from 6 April 2000 by section 34 of the Finance Act 1999), but not to widowers.

He claimed an equivalent payment.

Mr Justice Moses [2002] STC 347, made a declaration of incompatibility under section 4 of the Human Rights Act 1998, in relation to section 262 of the 1988 Act, but dismissed the taxpayer's claim for a money payment from the Inland Revenue Commissioners.

The claimant appealed.

Dinah Rose (instructed by Liberty) for the claimant; Timothy Brennan QC and Ingrid Simler (instructed by the Solicitor, Inland Revenue) for the commissioners.

Held, dismissing the appeal, that it was the intention of Parliament in section 262 of the 1988 Act and section 34 of the 1999 Act to pay widow's bereavement allowance only to widows; that the commissioners' wide powers to grant concessions to taxpayers did not entitle them to grant concessions which conflicted with the clear intention of Parliament; that in those circumstances, the commissioners had no power to make an equivalent payment to men and accordingly the declaration of incompatibility had been properly made; and that the commissioners had not acted unfairly or irrationally in their different treatment of the taxpayer as compared with other similarly situated widowers who had taken their claims to the European Court of Human Rights and been granted an amicable settlement.

(WLR)