Court of Appeal occupational pension case judgment
07 Feb 08
The Court of Appeal has given judgment today in the case of R (Bradley) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. The Court has held that the Secretary of State was irrational to reject the findings of the Parliamentary Ombudsman that the Department for Work and Pensions was guilty of maladministration when it misled members of occupational pension schemes into believing that their pensions were safe even if schemes wound up or the employers became insolvent, and that the scheme members suffered injustice as a result. Up to 125,000 people lost all or part of their pensions when occupational pensions schemes wound up.
In March 2006, the Parliamentary Ombudsman found that the Department for Work and Pensions had been guilty of maladministration by failing to warn pension scheme members that they had no more than a 50% chance of recovering their pensions if the sponsoring company became insolvent or wound up its scheme before they had retired. The then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, John Hutton, rejected the Ombudsman's findings. In February 2007 Mr Justice Bean allowed the campaigner's judicial review of that decision. The Government appealed and the case was heard in the Court of Appeal in July 2007, with judgment given today.
Dinah Rose QC and Tom Hickman (instructed by John Halford of Bindman and Partners) represented the successful claimants.