Liberty has today (27th February) won leave to appeal against the exclusion of widowers from receiving widows' bereavement tax allowance. The Court of Appeal will consider the decision of Mr Justice Moses at judicial review that the Inland Revenue did not act unlawfully in rejecting Adrian Wilkinson's claim to the allowance.

Mr Moses' judgment - following a High Court hearing last December - was published today. He found inter alia that "the refusal to grant an income tax reduction to men in a similar situation to women, is a breach of Article 14 [of the Human Rights Convention - the article on discrimination] read with Article 1 of the First Protocol in the absence of any objective justification advanced for such discrimination".

He found that the Inland Revenue can and does grant extra-statutory concessions - even ones which "directly contradict the intention of Parliament expressed in statutory provisions" - and that "there is no principle which would prevent the Revenue from issuing an extra statutory concession which contradicted the intention of Parliament to restrict the allowances to women".

However, he concluded that while the Revenue has a power to do so, it does not have a duty to. In refusing to exercise its power, he found that the Revenue had been acting lawfully but under a law that was incompatible with the Human Rights Convention.
He also ruled that the Revenue had not acted unfairly by failing to treat Mr Wilkinson in the same way as Mr Christopher Crossland (see below) - with whom the Government settled once he took his case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Liberty argued that the failure to grant Mr Wilkinson this allowance breached the Human Rights Act (see below).

Liberty legal director James Welch is Mr Wilkinson's solicitor; he also represented David Fielding, whose European claim the Government settled just a few weeks ago. He summarises: "The Government is settling cases in the European Court of Human Rights but is failing to honour similar claims in this country. The High Court judgment appears to accept that this is unfair - as it clearly is, to thousands of widowers. We hope that the Court of Appeal will find it is also unlawful".

Moses J also ruled against the case of Hooper, Withey and others, which relates to widow's bereavement benefit and which was heard in tandem with Wilkinson. This case will also go to the Court of Appeal - with the Secretary of State cross-appealing.

BACKGROUND
Adrian Wilkinson's wife died in June 1999. He wrote to the Inland Revenue late the following year, requesting the widows' tax allowance (a tax relief available to widows in the year of their bereavement and the following year) and was refused on the grounds that he was male. (Mr Wilkinson is 50, a father of two from Essex).

Liberty's case argued that the failure to grant this allowance breaches the Human Rights Act - specifically in relation to article 14 (discrimination) and article 1 of the 1st protocol (peaceful enjoyment of possessions- tax allowance is a possession for tax purposes). We argue that the Inland Revenue has the power to grant this allowance to men as well as women; we therefore sought a judicial review of the Revenue's refusal to refund this money to Mr Wilkinson.

Their refusal is rendered still more extraordinary by the circumstances of a previous European Court of Human Rights case on this point - brought by Liberty for Mr Christopher Crossland. In that case, the Government did not contest admissibility, and elected to settle Mr Crossland's claim. As they paid this allowance to Mr Crossland, it's clearly unfair not to pay it to everyone else in the same position: the Government has a duty to act fairly.

NOTE TO EDITORS: The widows' tax allowance was abolished in April 2000, shortly before the Human Rights Act took effect in October 2000. But because tax allowances can be claimed for six years, we say that the Inland Revenue should honour claims made after October 2000.