An employment tribunal has ruled in favour of the government in the latest judicial pensions dispute.
Dismissing the claims in T Clayson & others v Ministry of Justice and Lord Chancellor, the tribunal said the respondents did not treat the judges, who were representative of a larger group of circuit and retired circuit judges, less favourably than comparable full-time workers on the ground that the claimants were part-time workers.
When the Judicial Pensions and Retirement Act 1993 (JUPRA) came into force on 31 March 1995, circuit judges were given the option to join the new scheme or remain in their existing scheme under the Judicial Pensions Act 1981.
The claimants, who were recorders when JUPRA came into force, say they were treated less favourably when they were appointed circuit judges a few years later because they were compulsorily enrolled in JUPRA with no right to remain on JPA-equivalent terms.
The respondents argued that a comparator circuit judge would have been compulsorily enrolled in JUPRA if, like the claimants, they ceased to hold that office and appointed to another qualifying judicial office subject to a different pension scheme.
Dismissing the claims, the tribunal said that although the work of recorders and circuit judges were comparable for the purposes of the Part-Time Worker (prevention of less favourable treatment) Regulations 2000, the office of circuit judge was ‘some other qualifying judicial office’ for the purposes of JUPRA. However, had the judges been unlawfully treated less favourably, the tribunal said the respondents failed to justify such treatment on objective grounds.
